When you are watching a movie, and it makes you think of No Country For Old Men, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Thina Sobabili, you know you are watching something special but what makes it so special? Let's dig in...
Dis ek, Anna is in Afrikaans, but unlike Bagkat and Boer Soek 'n Vrou, Anna is a hard hitting kitchen sink drama with a court drama thrown into it for good measure. We all know the what (who killed who) but what we don't know is the (why). The movie is about discovering the why?
The why is not for the faint of heart. Based on a series of books by Anchien Troskie, Dis ek, Anna deals with the unpalatable topic of patriarchy,
paedophilia and rape - yeah it's that deep (as the cool kids say). The victims and perpetrators are white, middle class and Afrikaans. A welcome change from the norm where abuse and crime is something codified to affect black people, especially within SA film and television - although the b plot deals with a baby murdered in the Mangaung township among a coloured community.
Sara Blecher (director of Otello Burning, Ayanda) does another remarkable job in this movie. Her camera movements are not invasive, even her clever transitions to the flashbacks are not jarring nor do they draw too much attention to themselves.
She handles the abuse very tactfully. It's never a gory depiction but she does not withhold the impact of it. She somehow manages to make the film about the people on display, not just about the abuse.
The script is well written by Tertius Kapp. It's able to blend the true life story of the book author with her imagined reality of what could have happened if she had taken revenge on her abusive step dad.
The script does a great job in giving the two Anna's - Izel Bezuidenhout as young Anna and Charlene Brouwer as the older Anna - a lot of meat to work with. We see a systematic destruction of innocence with (a very brilliant Nicola Hanekom) as the mom who refuses to see what's happening in front of her.
Morne Visser is well cast as the abusive dad, 'cause he still has the loveable, charming, family man personae he plays well on screen but it is circumvented by the fact that this time he plays a rapist and paedophile who is a loving family man to the world. He does a brilliant job at this.
Marius Weyers is like Tom Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men, the moral anchor that is fast becoming disillusioned with how truly bad the world is. His disillusionment matches our own as the story continues.
Yet the film's third act does drag a little but the film is an important work of art and I'm willing to indulge its long running time. It's important in the sense that it shows how South Africa keeps guarding and re-enforcing a status quo that allows men with means to exploit women, either through sex, violence or even attitudes.
Yet it also shows that abuse is not just a working class issue nor a middle class issue but a South African issue and has roots in patriarchy. Dis ek, Anna is an indictment not just on Afrikaner middle class but on a society that makes it hard for rape and abuse victims to come out and speak out.
This, like Thina Sobabili, is a film about where we are as a society... a hard look at SA and the picture does not look good and we need to ask ourselves what are we willing to do as a society to make a change.
If you loved the series and the movies of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you are going to really appreciate this.
Rating ****1/2
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index
* Junk **Almost bearable ***Now we cooking **** Almost perfect ***** Classic