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Apartheid may shadow these productions as it did HBO's groundbreaking Mandela. It was shot last fall in Zimbabwe, where armed soldiers guarded the set. (The local office of the exiled African National Congress had been bombed six months before.) When curious farmworkers gathered around and learned that a movie about Mandela was being shot, they waved their arms and shouted, "Man-de-la! Man-de-la!" Recalls Woodard: "Zimbabwe is newly free and glistening with hope. Having South African refugees all around us gave the script new urgency."
Winnie Mandela, unbowed in the prolonged battle she wages in her husband's name against racial repression, was an elusive presence to the filmmakers. Since her husband was jailed, she has been restricted, held in solitary confinement and banned. Scriptwriter Ronald Harwood arranged to interview her in the Orange Free State, where she had been forced to move, but when Winnie drove up to the meeting place where Harwood was waiting, she reversed suddenly, then accelerated away. He never found out why.
At the heart of the drama is the relationship of two people who had no physical contact for 22 years and were long limited to the rare letter and visit. Together, Woodard, with her serene face and molten core, and Glover, an actor of towering force and compassion, transcend an otherwise ordinary hagiography. As a young bride, Winnie draws her strength from Nelson's huge, healing hands cupped around her face. When she visits him in prison, Winnie, wearing native dress, brings to him the exalted dignity that she has painfully won. Surrounded by guards, separated by plate glass, they are only allowed to say, "How are you?" "I'm fine." "How are you?" "Fine." "And the children?" "They are fine." Their eyes and smiles speak a silent reminder of apartheid's terrible human cost.
Unfortunately the filmmakers will not leave it at that. The movie is preachy and laden with speeches that hobble the narrative. Intricate political positions are drawn with a numbing oversimplification. All South African policemen are sadistic slobs with warty faces. Nelson is an immaculate martyr, always stoic. Winnie is a saint. But for all its flaws, Mandela does dramatize a country's deadly turmoil. "South Africa has been locked off for so long," says Woodard. "I'm hoping for other movies. Mandela is just one star in a huge black sky."