Fools (1997) User Reviews

Profound, Original and thought provoking: The "ordinary" struggle of black South Africans

[mike_garol · 9/10 · 17 April 2012]

Fools is one of my all-time favourites and I shall just give a short summary of the film as other reviews seem to be rather misleading. Have in mind that this was the first South African film to be directed and written by black South Africans after the fall of apartheid. The film is an adaptation of the short novel of the same name written by Njabulo Ndebele (1983).

Fools, holds a mirror up to the 1997 transitional period of South Africa and addresses many key political issues of the time. Fools is set in the black township of Charterston in the late 1980s in apartheid-era South Africa leading up to the township's school celebration of Dingaan's Day . The film follows the once-respectable-now-disillusioned Zamani, a school teacher who has raped one of his students, Mimi. Mimi's brother Zani comes back from Swaziland where he has graduated from high school and is full of fervour for the black struggle against apartheid. Zani tries to persuade the township people to boycott the celebration of Dingaan's Day because it marks the historical defeat of their (the Zulu) people at the hands of the Boers. The film comes to a climax on Dingaan's Day in a scene which shows a passing Boer's antique colonial car getting hit by a rock thrown by the head teacher of the township's school (Meneer). The stone hits the car accidentally, missing its intended target, Zani, with whom Meneer is enraged because of his incessant protesting against the nationalist, Afrikaner holiday. Suleman constructs a small-scale event reflecting the greater happenings of South Africa as a whole in 1989 in this scene as the white man is seen to be defeated by the black community .

If you can get hold of it you won't regret it!

Lack of subtitles did not increase my understanding....

[tim_buk2 · 20 August 1999]

‘Fools' was another film shown as part of the Fespaco film festival held here in Ouagadougou in Feb 99. Set in South Africa in 1989, the story is about a middle-aged teacher working in a black township and how his life is slowly falling apart. He drinks too much, he is nearing divorce with his wife, and he tries to avoid being pressurised by his politically motivated acquaintances in order to have a quiet life. Worst of all, in a profound misreading of the situation and lack of judgement, he rapes one of his students who brings a gift round to his house to thank him for helping her get through her exams. She doesn't go to the police but takes her guilt and shame home to her family.

'Fools' has one of the most gratuitous scenes in the first few opening minutes I can recall; a young black couple making love on a train complete with clichéd stock shots of pistons pumping and orgasmic amounts of white steam being squirted into the black night air. The film, post orgasmically, rather lost its way for half an hour before getting back to the plot which then made its way unevenly along for the rest of the film.

One of the most telling and powerful scenes toward the end involved a big, fat, white Boer farmer whose old car is accidentally hit by a rock thrown by the headmaster who was trying to clear a trouble maker off his grounds during a school picnic. The Boer gets out and demands in front of the whole school what the hell is going on. The headmaster, who up to now has been a dominant and authoritarian figure, is suddenly very submissive towards the angry Boer and cowers in fear. The Boer takes a whip out of the car (handy for just this sort of situation) and the headmaster flees with the whole school leaving our teacher standing alone in the open ground facing the irate Boer. When the teacher does not respond to the Boer's questioning he starts whipping him savagely. The teacher offers no resistance to this unwarranted attack and starts to laugh maniacally at the Boer. The silent crowd draws strength from the teacher's stance and surrounds the Boer who cannot cope with the teacher's defiant reaction and sinks to the ground sobbing. The teacher walks away obviously wounded but still laughing with the Boer sitting on the ground and the crowd quietly watching him. End of scene.

Cut to new scene of teacher walking across fields. In my view this was a good example of a scene not being concluded properly. The strong Boer character was introduced but his fate was not concluded. One might conclude that his fate was to be left to one's imagination but visual clues such as rocks being dropped to the ground from the hand of students preclude the obvious nasty mob lynching. It seemed throughout the film that the director took the audience just so far, lacked the conviction for a conclusion and then moved on to something else leaving too many annoying loose ends.

Also this is the third film out of three (the other two being ‘Rue Princesse' and ‘Pièces d'identités') were there has been a scene about middle aged men visiting young prostitutes. Is this a coincidence that I have seen the only three films in the festival touching this theme or are African (male) directors obsessed with this subject?

The film had French subtitles as half the dialogue was in a South African language and the rest was in English and Afrikaans. But yet again we had a poor view due to an obstacle that blocked part of the very bottom of the screen, just where the subtitles were. This undoubtedly had a negative effect on my complete understanding of the dialogue. Because of this I feel I cannot give it a score lower than 5 much as I wanted to.