Master Harold & The Boys | Matthew Broderick, Zakes Mokae | Preserving great performances of a...

Master Harold & The Boys | Matthew Broderick, Zakes Mokae | Intruiging Look at Race Relations

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Master Harold & Th...

	Master Harold & The Boys Matthew Broderick, Zakes Mokae Warner Home Video, 1993 average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Athol Fugard's Broadway hit was a heartbreaking microcosmic examination of the effects of the racist apartheid policies on both blacks and whites in South Africa. This taped stage production features terrific performances from Matthew Broderick and particularly from Zakes Mokae. Mokae is a waiter in a small tea shop, owned by Broderick's family. He has also been a surrogate father to Harold (Broderick), whose real father is an abusive, hospitalized drunk. Though Broderick dearly loves Mokae, his world is turned upside down by the prospect of his father's imminent return. When Mokae tries to help him prepare for the inevitable, Broderick instead turns his anger on the black worker, unleashing racist vitriol that culminates in a shockingly degrading moment that forever cuts these two friends off from each other. Powerful material that is superbly acted. --Marshall Fine

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Preserving great performances of a heartbreaking drama

This 1984 filming of the most famous South African play preserves the most accomplished work of the adolescent Matthew Broderick and a heartbreaking performance by the great South African actor Zakes Mokae, who played Sam in the first production (at Yale in 1982).Although very, very talkie, and unabashedly a record of a stage work with three actors on a fairly simple set, the film is not visually static. There are many closeups, seemingly more often of reaction shots than of the speaker.

The play is set in 1950, two years after the enactment of apartheid restrictions in South Africa. The reduction of black adults to a status below that of a bratty, damaged white adolescent is central to the play.

One might wonder if the dismantling of apartheid makes this drama any less compelling. Seeing it both onstage and on video last week, I would answer: not at all. Though I knew what was coming, it still packed quite a punch. The situation of an economically privileged youth being parented by servants is not at all unique to South Africa of apartheid times. Indeed, the play could have been set in the American South of the same time with no change other than making the tea-shop a café. The emotional dynamics of the relationships do not even require racial differences between the boss's son and the workers, though some of the particular force of the last half hour rests on the racism institutionalized by apartheid.

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Intruiging Look at Race Relations

Matthew Broderick is outstanding and race relations in South Africa are portrayed in a fresh and most importantly in a way that is neither depressing nor glamorized. Master Harold and the Boys continues to be one of my favorite plays of all time and this version perfectly captures the essence of what the play attempted to convey. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys fine acting and a very important message posed in a new and refreshing way.

Master Harold and the Boys

If you need convincing that Matthew Broderick is a fine actor, this is the film you must see.

Great Performances of a Phenomenal Show

Having seen both this version televised and a live performance of "Master Harold and the Boys", I can't think of a play that has touched me more. It is a truely wrentching look at the effect that prejudice and peer pressure can have on a loving relationshp. The performances in this production are outstanding - a side of Matthew Broderick's talent that will amaze. John Kani as Willie and Zakes Mokae as Sam give equally impressive performances.
Highly recommended...but make sure you've got a box of tissues on-hand!

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"The way we want life to be...a world without collisions."

This powerful three-character play, set in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1950, considers the interwoven relationships of young Harold (Hally), the seventeen-year-old son of the white proprietor of a tea room, and the two African men who have worked there for years. Hally has always considered Sam, the waiter, as a kind of father substitute, looking to him for guidance about the real world, since his undependable, alcoholic father has been living in an institution. When Hally's father is released from the hospital, Hally's fear of the future leads him to turn on Sam, releasing racial prejudice which has always before been hidden and damaging their relationship significantly.

Zakes Mokae portrays Sam, a person of vision and nobility who dominates the action of this powerful and poignant drama. Stunning in his ability to draw out the audience's emotions, Mokae keeps his delivery low key and his actions subtle. Matthew Broderick, as Hally, looks like a schoolboy here, but at age twenty-four in 1986, when this play was filmed, he has wide experience in the theater upon which to draw for this demanding role, and he does a terrific, if somewhat "stagey," job. John Kani, as Willie, the custodian, is a foil for both Broderick and Mokae, and while not exactly a buffoon, he is a character without subtlety or introspection, and Kani plays the role broadly.

Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg makes full use of the close-up to reveal feelings, including tears, and the action is almost completely internal. The only real movement on stage consists of Sam and Willie practicing their ballroom dancing for a contest, something that gives beauty, fun, and excitement to their lives, even though Hally demeans their efforts, explaining that "primitive black society [always] includes singing and dancing." Less a political drama than a human one, the play, based on an incident in the life of the author, rises above its immediate setting in South Africa during apartheid to consider universal feelings and human relationships. Mary Whipple

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reviews: page 1, 2

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