Mark Reviews Movies: MOFFIE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 8, 2021

Systems of oppression, such as the apartheid government that dominated South Africa for almost 50 years, are not limited in the scope of their persecution. The apartheid system was terrible in its treatment of the majority Black population of South Africa, but its rules and laws were founded upon a way of thinking and an ideology that went deeper than overt racism.

We can see it still today. Ask anyone who believes in some form of white supremacy or nationalism (We repeat ourselves in the separation of those terms) their opinion on other social matters, and the targets of their irrational wrath and hatred will expand exponentially. They believe in a specific kind of social "order." It's one that, conveniently and not-too coincidentally, puts their own specific group at the top of that perceived hierarchy. Everyone else is a "lesser," "undesired," or "unworthy" form of "other."

Co-writer/director Oliver Hermanus' Moffie is set during the apartheid regime of South Africa, specifically the year 1981, when the government perceived an external threat to their rule across the country's border. They were "outsiders" and "communists," not fighting for freedom in the government's mind, but trying to destroy—more than a policy or a system of laws or a government—a way of life—the "right" and "proper" order of the world and humanity in the minds of those who thought up and executed this oppressive system.

Hermanus' film, based on André Carl van der Merwe's semi-autobiographical novel, is not so much about apartheid as it is about the broader systems and thinking that would implement such an awful, evil system. On its surface, the story's perspective almost seems to be missing the point, because the film follows a young white man, drafted into military service for the preservation of the South African government at the time. With all of the horrors and persecution that have happened and continue to happen toward the country's Black population in the story's timeline, what could this particular tale—about a seemingly privileged white teenager in this place and at this time—have to say or explore about this system?

It has a lot to say and explore, in fact. In the film's depiction of the severity of basic training and indoctrination within the country's contemporary military, it gives us a frightening sense of how deep the sin of apartheid and the ideology behind it actually were—and, in certain circles, continue to be, if not being so overt about it.

Our protagonist is 17-year-old Nicholas van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer), who—like all men of his age and up until the age of 60—is conscripted into compulsory military service for two years. He's a quiet young man and the child of divorce (His mother, played by Barbara-Marie Immelman, has remarried, and his father, played by Remano De Beer, offers a gift of a nudie magazine before Nicholas leaves). On the train ride to training camp, his fellow conscripts yell and drink and fight, while Nicholas remains silent—even while witnessing a few young men harass and assault a Black man sitting on a bench at a train station.

The majority of this story takes place at training. Like all of the recruits, Nicholas is stripped, weighed, and regularly insulted by drill instructor Sgt. Brand (Hilton Pelser), whose sole task seems to be to work, abuse, and beat all sense of humanity out of the soon-to-be soldiers. It works (too well, if the public suicide of one recruit is any sign), although it only works because these young men are already part or most of the way there.

Most of the recruits agree with the foundation of his verbal assaults, referring to those who don't immediately fall in line, lag behind, or talk back by racial or homophobic slurs, as "communists," or as "traitors." Such tactics only work if one sees what those terms represent as a negative or if, in the case of the quiet and more thoughtful like Nicholas, one fears what being labeled as such might mean. These young men have been born and bred into such thinking, and this, in a way, is finally cementing that ideology into their minds, their routines, and their very existence. Even the camp's chaplain frames the military and the ongoing fight in political and racist terms.

Nicholas, as we find out, has a reason for fearing being seen as one of those "others." He is secretly gay (An impressively staged one-take flashback shows a defining, terrifying event from his childhood), and that cannot be abided in this military and this country. He sees what happens to two recruits who were caught kissing in a bathroom stall and beaten under the direction of the commanding officer. Still, there's fellow recruit Dylan Stassen (Ryan de Villiers), with whom Nicholas shares a tender night in a foxhole.

Hermanus treats all of this with a kind of matter-of-fact horror—a constantly mounting and encroaching fear of being suspected or found. Nicholas' silence, played with subtle terror and increasing numbness by Brummer, is both his means of survival and his imminent undoing. In such a system, where any kind of disagreement or fighting back or merely existing as an "other" is met with violence or psychological torture (There's an entire ward dedicated to "curing" gay recruits), to go along is, inevitably, to become part of that system, as Nicholas learns when he finally reaches the border.

Moffie offers a breakdown of how an oppressive system psychologically breaks down people to follow it. In its specificity to that end, the film is equally insightful and frightening.

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