ShareThisBy ROBERT DENERSTEIN
Friday, November 03, 2006
If you made a short list of actors who might play a South African Special Branch officer during the apartheid years, Tim Robbins wouldn't leap to mind.
But that's what happens in "Catch A Fire."
The movie tells the story of Patrick Chamusso, a black man who joined the rebellious A.N.C. after he was arrested and tortured for involvement in an attack on an oil refinery. Chamusso, who was innocent, was radicalized when he realized that innocence offered no protection against institutional racism.
You'll be disappointed if you're looking for Robbins, an outspoken liberal, to demonize his character. Speaking softly and employing an Afrikaans accent, Robbins paints a complex portrait of a character, Nic Vos, who believed he was fighting communism and terrorism.
Vos even took prisoners to his home for Sunday dinner.
"That's true, said Robbins, during an interview at September's Toronto International Film Festival. "My character is based on a couple of different people, one of whom was known for being a gentleman.
"However, the reality was that he knew people were being tortured. He'd come in and say, 'I can't believe you guys have done this.' It was a good-cop/bad-cop technique."
Vos' duplicity aside, Robbins shades the character, portraying him as a sensitive father and dutiful man.
"I don't think I would have done this film if he had been this out-and-out racist. My job was to find the humanity in the character. It was made a lot easier once I was there and started to understand the culture more, to see what it must have been like to be in South Africa at the time.
"The Afrikaner had been settled there more than 400 years. They felt that they were as much African as any black person. ...The job of the men in the Special Branch was to protect the country. I'm not justifying it, but I had to understand how this person thought about what he was doing."
During the apartheid days, Robbins spoke in opposition to a blatantly unjust South African system.
"I was against apartheid and attended rallies to free (Nelson) Mandela. I had no idea of the complexity of the situation. I understand it better now. I understand why these people did what they did.
"It certainly doesn't justify apartheid, but it shows us how bad ideas and bad policy can wind up making victims not only of the people it's oppressing, but of the oppressors themselves."
The South Africa in which Robbins plied his acting craft is far different than the one depicted in the movie. Apartheid has fallen. Mandela has become a revered figure. Problems persist, but large-scale violence hasn't erupted.
"Nothing's rosy by any stretch of the imagination, but it's miraculous that it is what is," said Robbins. "Mandela did two very important things when he became leader of the country. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission allowed anyone who had done anything _ on either side _ to come forward and say, 'I did this,' and not be prosecuted. That was a key because it allowed forgiveness.
"The other major thing he did was to say, 'We're not taking away land. We're not going to repossess land. The Afrikaner is as much an African as the black.' That allowed stability in the economy. It kept retribution off the table. That was huge."
During his stay in South Africa, Robbins was introduced to Mandela by a South African businessman, an Afrikaner who eventually recognized the futility of apartheid and staged illegal meetings with the A.N.C. leadership.
"I thought we'd go to a banquet, and there'd be 300 people, and I'd get to shake his hand. So I asked, 'Where will this be?' He said, 'Oh, at his house.' So we went and had lunch at Mandela's house... .
"I was curious about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Where did it come from? The Bible, the idea of turning the other cheek? Or was it from Gandhi? He said, 'No, it was South America, Argentina.' Someone pointed out that he was being too modest; that in Argentina, the process involved only a handful of people. This was the whole country."
"Catch a Fire" is not the first movie to deal with apartheid, so why do Robbins and his colleagues _ director Philip Noyce and actor Derek Luke, who plays Chamusso _ want to revisit the subject?
"At the heart of it, I think it's the idea of forgiveness," said Robbins. "That's the only real way forward. It's difficult to do. It's against that retributive gene in us that makes us want to avenge. But it's the only way toward relieving the violence. That's an important story to tell."
