Review/Opinion

'Moffie"

In 1981 South Africa, a pair of young men nestle in next to each other in a boot camp trench. The night is cold, and wet, and, along with the rest of their platoon-in-training, they have to spend the night out in the elements. Initially, they lie apart from each other, Nicholas (Kai Luke Brummer) with his back turned away. But when Dylan (Ryan de Villiers) whispers to him, he turns back, and they share a wordless moment, Dylan gently tracing the contours of Nicholas' face, in the first act of kindness and empathy either has felt in weeks. The shot holds for a long beat, and then, suddenly, it is the next morning, Nicholas is packing up his rucksack and whatever else transpired between them is left to our imagination.

The beauty of Oliver Hermanus' "Moffie" is in that edit point: A scrape of friction that, in its mysteriousness, expounds on the visual storytelling in a way so acute and well executed it reverberates long after the scene ends. The film is filled with such pristine moments: the precision of his mise en scene coupled with the discipline of the film's editing, as performed by Alain Dessauvage and George Hanmer, producing a work of profound, moving restraint.

This is in perfect keeping with the film's protagonist, Nicholas, a ruggedly good-looking 16-year-old, conscripted into the South African army, as all white boys were, for his required two-year service. He's gay but in denial, and in the macho mechanics of the Apartheid-swilling, Afrikaans-speaking Army (the title comes from an Afrikaans gay slur), must hide it deeply within himself or suffer the fate of some of the other, more recognizably gay teenagers in the platoon, one of whom shoots himself in the head, and others, including Dylan, sent to a "looney bin" where they are doped up to their eyeballs and abused 'round-the-clock.

Not that Nicholas' situation is decidedly better, living with the horrors of boot camp, led by a sadistic, miserable instructor (Jacques Theron), whose idea of discipline involves forcing one of his soldiers to eat back up what he just threw up during yet another round of forced push-ups. Nor is it much better when Nicholas' platoon is stationed on the border, where it is believed soldiers from Soviet-backed Angola threaten to invade the "communist-free" homeland. But he is able to keep his secret from being revealed -- we are to understand this is something of mixed blessing given the amount of repression required to keep up appearances -- which keeps him from being exposed, renounced and "re-educated" at an institution, at least, which is more than can be said for some of his other, like-minded compatriots.

For his part, Nicholas survives by keeping his emotional life very close to the vest, as many of the soldiers do (one soldier joyfully says, "I feel nothing!"), and, while not joining in the jeering abuse of the outed soldiers-to-be, certainly does nothing to speak out on their behalf. In a political system based on the brutal oppression of anyone not white, straight, and male, it would seem, intolerance isn't just accepted, it is fully encouraged and to be expounded upon.

The characters' inner emotional conflicts are perfectly reflected with the eclectic soundtrack, which includes Vivaldi, '80s dance hits, Rodriguez (a South African favorite) and composer Braam du Toit's atonal string flourishes, sheathing the narrative in evocative musical counterpoints. The eeriness of those strings creating a mood of such uncertain anxiety, that even the bright synth punchiness of Yazoo's "Don't Go" can't quite eradicate it.

It's quite the aesthetic package, with its gorgeous cinematography from DP Jamie Ramsay and lyric, elliptical style (a tall rush of reeds waving in the wind as a metaphor for one soldier's shaky mental state; Nicholas and Dylan in the ocean together, the camera bobbing at the water line such that we see their faces as separate entities from their bodies), brings to mind Claire Denis' masterful "Beau Travail," also concerned with the conflation of military maneuvers and repressed homoeroticism, but Hermanus' protagonists are much more deeply plagued by their political environment. By the end, it's pretty clear that under a thuggish, brutal system like Apartheid, complicity might spare your body, but it will most certainly come at the expense of your soul.

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‘Moffie’

89 Cast: Kai Luke Brummer, Ryan de Villiers, Matthew Vey, Stefan Vermaak, Hilton Pelser, Wynand Ferreira, Rikus Terblanche, Shaun Chad Smit, Hendrick Nieuwoudt

Director: Oliver Hermanus

Rating: Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

In subtitled Afrikaans, English

Playing theatrically

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