So much average

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Admirable film.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Watching any one of the three - Juliette Binoche, Samuel L. Jackson, Brendan Gleeson - painting a wall would be a good use of time. Seeing them all in the same movie is a rare treat.Jackson (Pulp Fiction) is Langston Whitfield from the Washington Post, sent to monitor the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa. To avoid bloodshed, the commission asked white Afrikaners to appear before a public tribunal, confess exactly what they did, convince the commission they were acting under orders, make a believable apology, and amnesty will be given.Bonoche (The English Patient, Chocolat)is Anna Malan, a poet, who is doing daily broadcasts for the South African Broadcasting Company.Gleeson (In Bruges, Into the Storm, The Guard) is De Jager, a a South African cop with a zeal for torture and murder that went far beyond his job requirements; a reputed psychopath that is taking the fall for all the other criminals his superiors, in a new South Africa.Anna finds out things she really didn't want to know, and Whitfield finds that truth is not so black and white, as he believed.

I am amazed to see the negative review this film got in North America. It is a wonderful film. The interpretation is excellent, very moving. Direction achieves its target very efficiently, without lengths. What better message than that of Love, that of seeking reconciliation? Force and violence never came to anything lasting. Admittedly, it very often took force and struggle and blood to achieve peace. But it has never lasted otherwise than by the love of man, the type of love which made us educate, cultivate, teach people everything we knew so that they would go even further in this direction, along this work, and so that by increasing human brotherhood love, we could achieve a more calm, more live-able, more fertile society, with a future still ahead. I tip my hat to the general attitude of the black people of South Africa, who has followed the lead of Mandela to see an end of war in the reconciliation process, an end to hatred, an end to insecurity, to this imaginary threat which used to inflame the minds contagiously and drove men to kill each other. It is difficult to bring a better message to the audience of a film. Very brilliant screenplay. Absolutely worth seeing. And I would add that one can see in that message the old axiom: it is not enough to be honest and to act according to his faith, beliefs, convictions; this attitude is just an elementary basics; what is needed is to act according to truth; and if one wants to know where the truth lies: it's what leads to more life, the solution that produces the most life, not one that respects one's personal beliefs, it would be much too easy ...

Recap: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is about to start in South Africa in a try to start a healing process in the divided country. People are able to bring their stories, their questions and their grievances before the commission and the responsible perpetrators is granted amnesty, if they tell the entire truth and can prove that their action were politically motivated, i.e. they were following orders. Journalists from the entire world travel to cover the event and so Anna Malan, an Afrikaan poet working for a South African station meet with American reporter Langston Whitfield. Together with Anna's sound technician Dumi Mkhalipi (and a lot of other journalists) they follow the Commission that tours the country and listen to the appalling stories.Comments: A interesting and catching movie trying to heal some wounds that tore through South Africa. Most appalling stories are brought to the front, but also forgiveness and images of a beautiful country. Binoche and Jackson perform beautifully as the reporters but the best acting performances is done by Menzi Ngubane as the charming sound technician Dumi and Brendan Gleeson as the cold calculating apartheid colonel De Jager, whom Whitfield interviews. That interview is told parallel to the main story and those subplots interact in a very interesting fashion.It is a good pairing with Binoche and Jackson, and one could feel early on that there was something between their characters. But when it started to get a little warm I thought, "Luckily she is married (happily) and has three boys, and he is probably married too (we only know that he has one kid)". Ten seconds later they went at it. I think it was unfortunate and unnecessary to bring in a love/cheat story into this as it steals attention and focus from the main cause, the commission. I guess the team wanted some drama, added to the main story that almost is a dramatized documentary. But they are wrong, the main story is strong enough on its own, and it was a mistake to introduce the love story. They should have stuck to the main story alone, it would have been better.7/10

IN MY COUNTRY (COUNTRY OF MY SKULL), based on a book by Antjie Krog about South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of 1996 set in the aftermath of Apartheid, has been altered by screenwriter Ann Peacock and director John Boorman who have elected to 'dramatize' that event by fleshing out 'committed journalists' on both sides of the color fence: South Afrikaner Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche) and American hothead Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson). The dichotomy of the white/black reconciliation is thus reversed; Anna is white defending the South African blacks while Langston is black firing his vitriol against the white South Afrikaners.The story is immensely important to tell: 21,800 blacks were tortured and killed in the final days of Apartheid, but in the wisdom of South African philosophy the perpetrators are given amnesty if they confront their crimes and show remorse. This noble morality is the single most touching aspect of this story.During the Commission hearings all reporters hear the grief of the victims' families and are stunned. Though initially hostile to each other, Anna and Langston gradually are able to listen to each other's perspectives and become romantically involved (both are married with children) and as the film ends the affair is ended in keeping with the example of the truth the TRC has established.In an attempt to make this reality into a movie the impact is dulled by the Hollywoodesque treatment. Yes, Binoche and Jackson are fine actors (as is Menzi Ngubane who plays a wholly lovable South African instigator), but the melodrama they are forced to enact is superficial and does not add to the otherwise powerful message of this film. This is a movie that deserves the attention of a wide audience. Just pay more attention to the facts than to the soupy frosting under which it plays. Grady Harp