Film Review of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

1. In general, what did you like and dislike about the film?

I really like the movie, because it shows a side of Nelson Mandela that is not usually portrayed, the one that was a revolutionary ready to die for the freedom of the southafricans, a man that had flaws and was not a god as people tend to believe, because they are way to immersed in the belief that he never did wrong. 

What I also enjoyed of the movie was the big role of Winnie in the struggle for the rights of the black people. 

I really did not like that the movie portraits Mandela almost like an angel, I know pretty well that he was a great man that fought almost his entire life for the abolition of the Apartheid, but we can not ignore that he was cruel towards his first wife and almost abandoned his first son. I know love knocks you hard when it hits, but you can not forget everything so simply! life is not like that. He just loved the young and submissive Winnie! That truly angered me! He was so struck in his own life that he totally forgot that that woman was the one who had to endure the loneliness and hardships of rising two girls in a world full of injustice, that she was the one that made his name outside, it was her the one that never gave up in the almost never ending fight for his release of prison and all southafricans freedom and rights.

2. In your own words, how would you compare the "various Mandelas;" the ones from the article and the one from the film?

I think that the film was able to capture is side, but of course one was amplified to make the movie more appealing to the western liking. In history, some people's good sides can totally keep in the dark their bad side or it can make them look as some kind of deity or goodness that came to earth to save us of our own evil. I think that is Mandela's case. I cannot deny that he was an amazing man that fought through and through a lot , but he has his . Like he was Jesus being judged for prophesying that he was the son of God. Nelson had his mistakes in life, he was as human as any of us. the difference is that he was brave enough to put his life in danger for the rights of his people, but let us not forget that he was not the only one.

I think that we can not judge the fact that he stopped thinking that violence was the way out of the problems, I think that his time in prison made him reconsider things and I totally support his idea of no violence. I know that some of the huge changes in history were product of violence (like the French Revolution), but it does not mean that in other situations it will come in hand. 

3. What was the role that Winnie Mandela played in the film? Think about the contrast between her and the other ANC members.

I was so awestruck by Winnie Mandela, I feel ashamed that I did not know of her before she died, I feel so ignorant. She was such a strong woman, a true example of a leader who lives with her people, who hears his problems and struggles with them. I do not approve her support on "necklacing", as I strongly think that violence and bloodshed is never the answer to any problem and, as Mandela says at the end of the movie, "no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." 

As I wrote above, it angers me the fact that Mandela stopped thinking of her in a romantic way for the fact that she had changed over the years! She obviously would! She had to raise two daughters alone, keep his fight and be a leader. Loves changes over time, but you can not discard her so easily just because he thought that she was no longer 'his' Winnie. It also surprises me that she is not as known as her former husband. I think, that as always, the role of a great woman was covered by the decision of a man.

4. How do you compare the role of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress in the struggle against the apartheid and in the post-apartheid South Africa to the Concertación and their role in the struggle against Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship and in post-dictatorial Chile?

Well, I had no idea that the chilean dictatorship was related to the apartheid, so I had to make a little research. I have to day that I am shocked by the roots of it all, how all the evil things that happened after the Second World War is related. It saddens me that, sometimes, our world seems to be more linked by the evil than by the good. 

 I read that the apartheid and the dictatorship were quite similar in the way the both of them had no respect for the human rights and their brutality, because of that, they were considered the the international parias 

I think that the conciliatory process in Chile and South Africa were both blinded by the idea of peace and they forgot to establish laws that could keep their freedom and equal rights. 

And about Nelson Mandela and Patricio Aylwin, they both wanted the best fr their countries, but the process was something way too complicated for they to accomplish and they were under the pressure of the "governments" before them.