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| moviereview DISGRACE |
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Steve Jacob's confronting adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's Booking prize winning novel about sex, lies and a new South Africa. | score 4 |
moviereview rates films from 1 (unwatchable) to 5 (unmissable) |
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| Cast John Malkovich, Jessica Haines, Eriq Ebouaney Director Steve Jacobs Screenwriter Anna Maria Monticelli Country Australia / South Africa Rating / Running Time M / 120 minutes Australian Release June 2009 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006-2009
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
“The
dog hated its own nature and began to punish itself.”
Author J.M. Coetzee’s allegorical consideration on the burden of
desire twinned with the crumbling of his native South Africa was so
forcefully devastating it was awarded the 1999 Booker Prize. Steve
Jacobs’ winning adaptation is a stunning blend of literary and
cinematic force that faithfully brings the novel to the screen. Disgrace is a tough, uncompromising drama that centres on David Lurie (Malkovich), an emotionally chilly professor of poetry who spends his well-dressed days teaching, reading and composing opera in Cape Town. Lurie passes through life with an air of contemptuous ennui yet inside beats the troubled heart of a predator and a racist. When an inglorious affair goes awry, he escapes to his daughter Lucy’s farm where a sudden act of appalling violence forces him to reconsider his very being. Conflict is everywhere as black and white fight for control, both literally and symbolically: young against old, male against female, head against heart. Symbolism is the cornerstone of Disgrace. From the mixed race child Lucy is carrying to the way her black neighbour inveigles himself into their lives, everything means something else. That it doesn’t crumble into the contrivance that trips many a literary transfer is credit to Jacobs who offers a restorative jolt to the power of old school art house cinema. As Lurie retreats from the edge to seek forgiveness, those initial steps are given a head-smacking potency by Malkovich’s symphonic performance, one grounded with the explosive force of change. “I won’t let it go too far,” he says but you know he will. Disgrace paints a stunning portrait of a man and a country reconciling past and future in a fiercely divergent present. // COLIN FRASER |