NR| 1h 43m | Drama | 1952
Aging, respected black minister, Rev. Stephen Kumalo (Canada Lee) travels to Johannesburg, some 350 miles from his village Ixopo, where he lives with his wife. There, with Rev. Theophilus Msimangu’s (Sidney Poitier) help, Stephen discovers that having uprooted themselves from a family-centered rural life and embracing individualistic city life, his estranged family has drifted from the morality they were raised with. Stephen’s aging brother John Kumalo (Edric Connor) is separated from his wife. With Stephen’s adult son, rebellious Absolom (Lionel Ngakane), John has allowed his adult son Matthew to drift into petty crime. Stephen’s sister, Gertrude (Ribbon Dhlamini), now a single mother, has drifted into prostitution.
Meanwhile, Ixopo’s white farming landlord James Jarvis (Charles Carson) worries about his young adult son Arthur, who lives in Johannesburg. Mrs. Jarvis (Joyce Carey) is proud of her son’s work to prevent poor, black children from stepping into a life of crime and juvenile delinquents from staying in it. James doesn’t mind Arthur’s courage and compassion, but his own feudal upbringing prefers that Arthur keep his distance from blacks.
Having lived lifelong in Ixopo, Stephen and James know of each other, but haven’t met. That’s about to change with the intertwining fates of their sons.
Absolom, Matthew, and another black youngster break into a white neighborhood. But before they burgle a house, a frightened Absolom ends up shooting dead the white occupant, who happens to be Arthur. Arrested, Absolom faces a court trial that may see him hang and his young bride-to-be widowed. That sets in motion a chain of events that force Stephen and James to confront each other’s pain and loss, and their preconceptions about hurt and healing.
Paton’s book on black-white reconciliation faced a ban in South Africa, published as it was just when apartheid’s segregation was formalized. His Christian upbringing imbued his work in heading a reform school for black children and juveniles, with a gentle, but defiantly hopeful resistance to racism.
Unsurprisingly, this film that Paton coproduced with Zorda, brims with Biblical symbolism. Paton’s sincerity is embodied in two white characters whose every line of dialogue counts: Martens (Michael Goodliffe), Absolom’s compassionate probation officer, and Father Vincent (Geoffrey Keen), whose Johannesburg mission cares for the visiting Stephen.
Zorda’s slow, seemingly dull, narrative lacks technical or artistic finesse and has little entertainment value. That isn’t his intent. Instead, he conveys, more profoundly than many films of this kind, the transformative power of an inward, spiritual journey on the outward man.
Leave Broken, Return Whole
Zorda likens the idyllic village of Ixopo to a kind of Eden, exuding truth and kindliness. A narrator says of its grass, “Care for it, ... for it ... cares for men. Destroy it and man is destroyed.” The city Johannesburg symbolizes selfishness and deception.To Stephen, those who leave Ixopo’s paradise for the seductions of Johannesburg end up disconnected from themselves first, then from others. Those who leave rarely return. He does. And his return home brings healing just as his temporary exile from it brought hurt.
Arthur represents the divine spark in man, a sacrificial lamb whose devotion to the lost and vulnerable costs him his life. His diary notes about the brotherhood of man lie lifeless on his desk. But his words don’t die with him. His grieving father, reflecting upon page after page, transforms his fury into forgiveness.
To Paton, it’s fear and ignorance that divides; only truth and understanding can reconcile that division. James, who once smarted at seeing Arthur photographed smiling, shaking hands with blacks, finds himself shaking hands with those who respectfully condole Arthur’s death.
When Stephen meets James, he’s like the biblical prodigal son, fumbling, falling to the ground before this towering fatherlike figure; James doesn’t yet know that it’s Stephen’s son that killed his own. Ashamed, Stephen fears facing James’s wrath. But James reassures him, “If it is my anger of which you are afraid, you need not be.”
