Director Richard Attenborough received the greatest accolades of his career for Gandhi (1982). The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, Best Actor and Best Cinematography.

After flopping with the screen adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical A Chorus Line (1985), Attenborough wisely returned to the themes of Gandhi for his next project.

Cry Freedom had much in common with Gandhi, including most of the key crew members. Producer/director Attenborough, cinematographer Ronnie Taylor, writer John Briley set decorators Stuart Craig and Michael Seirton, and costume designer John Mollo had all won Oscars with Gandhi, and returned for Cry Freedom. Also working on both films was composer George Fenton and sound men Jonathan Bates and Gerry Humphreys, all of whom were nominated for Oscars in Gandhi.

The story for both films had much in common as well. They were based on real people and real events. A wealthy white minority represses (and occasionally massacres) the nonwhite majority, who mostly live in squalor and poverty. A leader emerges as a spokesperson for the majority, and becomes a martyr.

From a liberal perspective, the problem with Cry Freedom was that the focus of the story was not black leader Steven Biko, but white journalist Donald Woods. Woods (Kevin Kline) is the editor of a leftist South African newspaper. The apartheid government strictly segregates blacks into slum 'townships', where they serve as menial laborers for the wealthy and privileged whites. Woods is befriended by Biko, who seeks black integration and empowerment.

But Biko disappears from the story about halfway through. The remaining eighty minutes concerns Woods' escalating conflicts with the ruthless security forces, and the Von Trapp-styled escape of his perfect family into neighboring Lesotho. For critics, this did not compare well with Gandhi, whose title subject did not have to compete for screen time with a white hero.

The Academy Awards were also not as kind to Cry Freedom, although the film did receive three nominations. Two went to composer Fenton. The third went to Denzel Washington, who demonstrated a convincing South African accent. Washington was little known at the time, but landed the plum role of Steven Biko. It proved to be the turning point of his career, and he is now one of the top actors in Hollywood.

Steven Biko is unquestionably deserving of his own feature length Hollywood biography. But it was natural for Cry Freedom to focus on Woods, since the screenplay was based on two books that he had written about his experiences.

Admittedly, the first half of the film is better than the second. The charismatic Biko is a more interesting character than Woods, who often comes across as smug or insolent. Woods reminds me of Richard Dix from Cimarron (1931), who played a newspaper publisher in Oklahoma territory that was very proud of his 'magnanimous' editorial on Indian rights. It is not a revelation when you acknowledge the obvious.

The film's treatment of South African classes can be superficial as well. The black characters are universally peaceful, proud, good-natured and courageous. Militant blacks are completely absent, except as a concept for Biko to refute. There are some 'good' whites, but the rest are dull-witted bureaucrats or malicious, devious thugs.

This is not to belittle the great injustice of government-sanctioned segregation and racism. Although it was propaganda, Cry Freedom helped in no small way to end apartheid, which was dismantled due to international economic boycotts of South Africa. Cry Freedom is a film in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Its spirit overcomes its weaknesses of character development. (72/100)

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older