I think in the past I used to support the school of thought that used to argue that any film/movie/documentary that is South African based the actors must be South African. I understand the argument that nobody can play a South African than a South African. It seems to make sense.
but, proverbial.
Are we saying, Mohammed Ali should have played himself and not Will Smith? Are we saying Mandela and de Klerk should have played themselves and not Michael Caine & Sidney Portier(f7)?
So, Leornado diCapro plays a South African Afrikaaner and gets the accent wrong, but hey, why did we just notice the accent as being wrong? What about his entire role? What about, that simple thing that called, 'acting'. Is playing a role dictated by your accent alone? Wait, are we saying a South African is simply his/her accent? Surely that is not true? So why do we obsess about the accent?
Wait how about this scenario. Say I am a producer and I have say, 150 million dollars I want to spend in producing a film. I find a story, a South African story, say, 'catch a fire'. (digression) Why did they call that movie 'Catch a Fire', does not seem to make sense in the english context anyway, did they translate it from isiZulu? (end of digression).
So, as a producer I get a story and I look for actor's, actor's that in my opinion can tell the story right (well right is subjective, but you get my point). So I decide to make 60-70% of the cast South African, and make the leading actor American, hey it' s my money right? Does it matter who tells the story? Isn't it more important that the story being told, isn't that what film is about, telling a story?
Another thing, we didn't mind when a lot of South African's who got casted on 'Hotel Rwanda' to play Ugandan's, double standards.
I think it is more important that we rejoice in the fact that for once in awhile, the superficial people of hollywood believe the next best stories are from Africa, and lord knows we have some stories to tell. We can only hope that the stories that are being told, are told right and truthful.
People are just people are just people are just people - Lari.
So the producer director whatever had the option to just write a story.
They should have just written a story, accept they didn\'t, they insisted the character was South African...and it won\'t matter to anybody else in the world accept South Africans, that the accent was not South African.
On the contrary though a lot of people seemed to have liked Leo\'s take on South African speak like broer...can\'t remember the others.
In my opinion, he did it better than most. Which is not to say it was good. Thing is, if they tell you the dude\'s South African - you just automatically just want to see if he pulls it off.
I\'m sure that in Uganda, the peops were on some, those damn people don\'t sound like us as well.
Still, the story is still appreciated when it is told well.
That Mandela and DeKlerk story was BARD, very BAAAAAAARDly told. Irrespective of accents, but probably more so because of the accents.
Black Diamond was a good story told well. Hotel Rwanda as well.
Feb 2007
Mar 2007