Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Review

Entry posted by Jean Valjean September 25, 2016

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:kaukau: I really wanted to like this movie. I had every reason to look forward to it. Idris Elbe received a Golden Globe nomination, and if nothing else the subject matter deserved my respect. Mandela was a great man. Normally biographical dramas about great people make for good films.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to say for this movie. While I can agree that Idris Elba's performance was good, that's about the only good thing that I have to say for this movie. It was pretty easy to put my finger on what ruined everything else, too. Long Walk to Freedom didn't feel long at all, because it had quite possibly the worst editing that I've ever seen. I've had to think for a bit about whether or not it deserves that exclusive spot at the very bottom, but it was bad enough to be in the running.

This goes above most people's heads. Editing? What makes for "good" and "bad" editing? Good editing is something that most of us take for granted, and we rarely ever complain about bad editing. I'm not sure many of us know what bad editing even looks like. Watch Long Walk to Freedom, and you'll understand what bad editing is, and why editing makes such a big difference in a movie.

Imagine this: you're watching a scene, and you're not sure where it's going, and before it has a chance to go anywhere, it ends. It just...ends. Next scene. Scenes are generally meant to built up on themselves and come to some sort of conclusion before transitioning into the next scene. In this movie, that rarely happens. The scenes in this movie are all way too short. For the first hour of the film, all of the scenes were less than a minute long. I say this without exaggeration. It wasn't until an hour into the film that there was even one scene that lasted for more than a minute. In the second half of the movie, the scenes get a little longer, but not much. The movie runs on an uneasy staccato of short spurts, and the scenes rarely transition into each other, so it's not like there was a rhythm anywhere in that staccato.

In the beginning of the movie, you get a brief glimpse at Nelson as a child roaming the planes. Then it ends. You see him living in the city, and he meets a girl. Before I'm even aware that there's chemistry between them, they're dating, and by the time I realized that they were dating, they were married. Interspersed throughout all of this were scenes of the injustices of South African society, which makes it difficult to follow exactly what's happening in Mandela's life. I don't have a good sense of time. Meanwhile, Mandela suddenly has grown children already. This comes out of nowhere. I had no idea that the story had already progressed to much. Mandela then has an affair, engages in more revolutionary activity, gets sent to jail, gets a divorce, and then remarries, all within the first half hour of the film.

Throughout all of this, you don't get a good long look at Mandela. None of the scenes linger enough for you to develop a feel for Mandela, or any of the people that he associated himself with. Every detail of the film feels like it's part of an opening exposition, and not part of the actual story. I kept on waiting for the actual story to start and for the movie to start flowing. That never happened. Nothing seems important, because the

Because of the editing, there was never a nice long scene that fully illustrated the injustices of apartheid and let it all just sink in, so the movie fails as a period piece. Because of the editing, the movie is poorly paced, and you don't have a good grasp on the titular long walk to freedom. Time is very confusing. I also care a lot about music, and this movie's score got nominated for a Golden Globe, but the editing really ruined the score, since it didn't have the chance to really build up over any scenes. The music was always rushed, and felt awkwardly shoehorned into scenes. Finally, and most egregiously, the editing does Idris Elba's acting injustice. I feel like he was delivering his performance one small burst at a time, and it's like you're only getting small glimpses of him. The performance should be good enough that you should be drawn into it, and the editing should allow for that to happen.

I can only assume that there will someday be a much better film about Mendela, one that's edited like a normal movie. Until then, this is the main film about him. That's unfortunate, especially since I watched this with my sister who knew nothing about Mandela and didn't feel that she learned anything about him in this one. A film about him should be enlightening and educational, and some director with a love of history is going to want to make Mandela's story truly come alive someday. That's something that I look forward to.

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