Movieguide Review Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom presents a selection and distortion of the history of South Africa and Nelson Mandela as the secular humanists of the New World Order would like us to percieve it. The film rushes through the life and times of Nelson Mandela, completely ignoring the Cold War context and threat of Soviet communism on the borders of South Africa at that time. It glosses over the murders and massacres of the Marxists and presents scenes that stereotype whites as racist and blacks as noble revolutionaries only seeking for justice. MARKETING THE MANDELA MYTH
MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM Quality: *** Good Acceptability: - 4 Abhorrent SUBTITLES: (Some Xhosa with English subtitles) WARNING CODES: Language: LL Violence: VVV Sex: SS Nudity: NNN RELEASE: 25 December 2013 TIME: 146 minutes STARRING: Idris Elba, Naomie Harris, Tony Kegoroge, Riaad Moosa. DIRECTOR: Justin Chadwick PRODUCERS: Anant Singh EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Cameron McCracken, Francois Ivernel, Jeffrey Qhena, Basil Ford, Harvey Weinsteia, Sudhir Pragjee and Sanjeev Singh. WRITER: Screenplay by William Nicholson. BASED ON THE NOVEL: Nelson Mandela’s Autobiography: Long Walk to Freedom. DISTRIBUTOR: Origin Pictures, Distant Horizon and Pathe. CONTENT: (HHH) Very strong humanist worldview and statements hostile to and dismissive of Christianity. (PaBaPa) Very strong pagan worldview and pagan elements, including Xhosa animist circumcision rituals for coming of age/passing through the fire. Witchdoctor and praise singer positively portrayed. Numerous flashbacks to this circumcision ritual throughout the movie. (NNN) Numerous instances of full frontal male nudity as part of animist ritual cleansing in the river and for strip search at prison. Partial female nudity in scenes of adultery depicted and female strip search in prison. (LL) Numerous obscenities and profanities. (MM) Numerous intense instances of immorality and adultery depicted on screen. (OOO) Occultic worldview and elements depicted in witchdoctor-supervised teenage male circumcision ritual revisited in numerous flashbacks. (AAA) Heavy drunkenness and abuse of alcohol depicted. (DD) Much smoking throughout the film. (FEFE) Feminist worldview promoted. (AbAb) Strong anti-Biblical, anti-Christian sentiments expressed by central characters. (II) Internationalist and globalist worldview promoted. (PCPCPC) Much politically correct stereotyping and promotion of new world order idols and ideals. (RoRo) Strong romantic worldview. (RHRHRH) The entire film is riddled with revisionist history. (SS) Adultery and promiscuity depicted. (SoSo) Socialist worldview promoted. (VVV) Very shocking, graphic and disturbing brutal scenes of violence, shooting, stabbing, axing, hacking and burning alive of victims. (CoCo) Although the term and symbols of communism are strikingly absent, the film promotes communist leaders, organisations and causes. (B) There are three references to the need to forgive and a comment about love being stronger than hate. GENRE: Documentary Drama. INTENDED AUDIENCE: General REVIEWER: Dr. Peter Hammond SUMMARY: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom presents a selection and distortion of the history of South Africa and Nelson Mandela as the secular humanists of the New World Order would like us to percieve it. The film rushes through the life and times of Nelson Mandela, completely ignoring the Cold War context and threat of Soviet communism on the borders of South Africa at that time. It glosses over the murders and massacres of the Marxists and presents scenes that stereotype whites as racist and blacks as noble revolutionaries only seeking for justice. REVIEW: Producer Anant Singh is recognised as South Africa’s preeminent anti-apartheid film producer. Previous productions of Singh includes: Place of Weeping, Sarafina!, Red Dust and Cry, the Beloved Country. Heavily funded by the South African ANC government and the Nelson Mandela Foundation, this £22 million authorised biopic presents a selection of incidents from the history of South Africa and the life of Nelson Mandela that will go a long way towards further marketing the Mandela myth. Shot for spectacle with impressive crowd scenes, the legend of Nelson Mandela is presented with numerous speeches backed with swooning orchestration that climbs to emotional peeks whenever Nelson Mandela addresses any crowd. London born actor, Idris Alba, plays Nelson Mandela from his early days as a smooth lawyer through his recruitment to the African National Congress (ANC), to his arrest, imprisonment, eventual release and election as president. Naomie Harris plays Winnie, the fiery revolutionary love interest and second wife of Nelson Mandela. The film begins with Nelson Mandela as a teenager going through the Xhosa circumcision ritual where witchdoctors prepare youth for initiation rites. The painting of their naked bodies in white chalk, passing through the smoke of burning everything relating to their childhood and washing off in the river, with full frontal male nudity, is disturbingly depicted. Next we see the Nelson Mandela character depicted as a smooth lawyer in a three piece suite walking past anachronistic security gates and burglar bars which did not exist in South Africa in the 1940s. The film is a mythic and heroic story of man against man. In this case it is a black man leading all black people against white people who are depicted as uniformly racist, shallow and stupid. The film makers apparently believed that the best way to exalt Nelson Mandela was to depict all whites as narrow-minded, selfish, racist bigots. The first scene of whites in the movie is of them sipping champagne on a balcony, while the black workers bussle around on the streets below. Numerous fictional incidents and comments are inserted in order to reinforce this stereotype. The time worn cliché of the reluctant revolutionary is inserted into the story turning Nelson Mandela from a happy-go-lucky smooth lawyer confounding a white woman in the witness box, to a frustrated and angry revolutionary fighting for justice, peace and equality for all. Numerous incidents of mindless police brutality are depicted, giving the impression that, without any provocation, or reason, they would beat up, or shoot, black men, women and children in cold blood. Nelson Mandela’s pattern of adulterous relationships and repeated beating of his first wife are briefly touched on in a few fleeting scenes. Then much attention is given to the romance with Winnie, who became his second wife. In contrast to the repeated, respectful treatment of animism, Christianity is dismissed in a few striking statements and scenes. Mandela states that God only seems to answer the prayers of the Boers, and Winnie declares that there is no God who will save us, we must save ourselves! Later Winnie Mandela gives a revolutionary call to violence from the front of a church, where the cross is obscured. With much anger and expressions of hatred, Winnie Mandela repeatedly calls for using stones, boxes of matches and petrol to ‘necklace’ the informers and kill the enemy. One brutal burning to death of a supposed informer through the ANC’s signature necklace method is depicted. Actually, over 1,000 black people were burnt to death by the brutal necklace murder, so publically promoted by Winnie Mandela. Many of these were elected black town councillors and mayors – but that is not acknowledged in this film, which claims that blacks had no rights, no votes and no elected representatives. Significantly there is no mention of the Cold War context and not a scene or a reference to communism, the Soviet Union or the Russian and Cuban troops, at that time engaged in conventional warfare on the border of Angola and South West Africa. No mention is made of the Cuban training in terrorism received by Nelson Mandela. Nor are any of the victims of his bombing campaign depicted. From the film one would get the impression that his armed struggle consisted of nothing more than night time bombings of unoccupied municipal offices and a power station. In fact none of the ANC’s car bombings are depicted, not even the Church Street bombing bloodbath. None of the ANC assasinations, such as of Bartholemew Hlopane, are depicted or referred to. Nor the Shell House massacre when Nelson Mandela, as head of the ANC, after his release from prison, ordered his security to open fire on unarmed Zulu protestors belonging to the INKATHA Freedom Party. At no time does one even see a hammer and sickle. The huge Soviet and South African Communist Party flags that Nelson Mandela spoke in front of are nowhere to be seen in this film. Neither are any of the white Russian communist members of the ANC, such as Joe Slovo and Ronnie Kasrils, depicted in any way in this film. It is disturbing that this film was released across the United States on Christmas Day. With songs of praise and hymns glorifying Nelson Mandela being sung by choirs and taught to school children, we seem to be seeing a beginning of a new religion. Certainly Nelson Mandela is the pre-eminent icon and idol of the New World Order. The United Nations General Assembly even declared 18 July, Nelson Mandela International Day! The timing of this heavily state funded propaganda film was interesting as the ANC, mired in corruption scandals, was heading into an election year. Many saw the timing of this film as a distraction from the disastrous failures of the ANC, by rewriting history to depict the past in the worst possible light and rally the voters of South Africa behind the party of the revered Nelson Mandela. The violence of the ANC is mostly blamed on Winnie Mandela with Nelson Mandela apparently disapproving. Even when referring to Mandela's divorce from Winnie, Mandela's character blames it on the apartheid government! There are disturbing and shocking scenes of the black on black violence in the townships with axing, macheting, shooting and hacking of men, women and children, but no explanations given as to who was doing what to whom. At no time is any hint given that there were actually other black political parties in South Africa, such as the INKATHA Freedom Party, with whom the ANC were locked in deadly turf wars. Throughout the film, Nelson Mandela dominates the screen and always has the most intelligent and profound things to say. He always has the last word, even in court and in prison. No one else ever seems to have a reply for his dogmatic statements. After all the depictions of white racism and evil, the film concludes with Nelson Mandela commenting: "If I can forgive them – you can forgive them!" He asserts "peace is the only way." The film ends with a quote from Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom book: "My country is not meant to be a land of hatred. People are taught to hate and they can be taught to love. Love comes more naturally than hate." If the message of the film is forgiveness then it is a good message. However, divorced from the context of the brutal war being waged by the ANC to intimidate the people in the townships, and terrorise farmers and civilians, this film turns communists into heroes and Christians into villains. It also denies the depravity of man, claiming that love (apart from God) is natural and dismisses God as irrelevant. The film wisely stops at Mandela's Presidential Inaurguration in May 1994. That is understandable, because at two and a half hours long, the film drags and sags at times. It is quite episodic. However, it would be relevant to note that the Nelson Mandela presidency was a disappointment and a failure in many ways. Nelson Mandela reintroduced race classification for Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment and job reservation. He legalised pornography and abortion. Violent crime exploded with rape and child abuse increasing 400% during his presidency. The currency imploded and the ANC looted the country of billions of rands through chronic corruption. Over one million, seven hundred thousand babies have been killed, officially, legally, in South Africa, with taxpayers money, since Nelson Mandela forced through the Termination of Pregnancy Bill, 1 February 1997. Under Nelson Mandela's presidency, an average of 25,000 people were murdered each year. Yet, to celebrate his birthdays, Nelson Mandela would regularly open prison doors and set many convicted criminals, including armed robbers, murderers and rapists, free. Some of these were murdering and raping within 24 hours of being released. Well over 100,000 people were murdered under Mandela's term as president. To put this into perspective, in 44 years of apartheid, 18,700 people were killed in politically related violence, most at the hands of ANC supporters. This included soldiers, police, terrorists, civilians, necklace murders, rioters - all victims. However, after Mandela became president in 1994, an average of 25,000 people were murdered every year. Over 85,000 whites have been murdered in South Africa since 1994, 4,000 of them farmers. In the 1970s, even while facing terrorism, riots and engaged in a border war with the Cubans in Angola, the SA Rand was stronger than the US Dollar. In Mandela's first four years as president, the Rand lost 80% of its value and more than 2.8 million man days were lost to strikes. The national debt doubled under Nelson Mandela’s presidency. Therefore, under Mandela, even with no war, no sanctions, no riots, no conscription and with massive international aid and investment, the Rand plummeted to R10 to the Dollar. Economic deterioration and sky-rocketing crime marred his presidency. The Economist at the time described Nelson Mandela's presidency as: "a failure." However, we are not meant to allow facts to get in the way of a good story. So, this Mandela film calls us to forget all these facts and to shelve our pro-life, pro-family, moral convictions and bow before this new idol, sing this politician’s praises and effectively burn incense before the image of a new Ceasar. SUMMARY: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom presents a selection and distortion of the history of South Africa and Nelson Mandela as the African National Congress (ANC) would like us to remember it. This heavily state-funded biopic is politically correct propaganda which markets the Mandela myth by ignoring the Cold War context and threat of Soviet communism on the borders of South Africa at that time. Stereotypical and episodic, it includes numerous obscenities, nudity, occultism, pagan and humanist worldviews, anti-Biblical and anti-Christian sentiments, immorality, adultery, drunkeness, smoking, extreme, brutal and disturbing violence, revisionist history and racism. IN BRIEF: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom markets the Mandela myth by demonising white South Africans, dismissing Christianity and God, promoting paganism, occultism, humanism, socialism, and justifying violent revolution. The film is a mythic and heroic story of man against man. Despite ending with a call for forgiveness and love, the rest of the film seems more inclined to incite hatred and racial sterotyping. It does not allow the facts of history to get in the way of their story of this icon and idol of leftist causes and the socialist New World Order. Dr. Peter Hammond The Film Review by Dr. Peter Hammond was first published by Movieguide. See also: Idolatry is the Most Condemned Sin in the Bible Mandela Day and the Making of a New Religion Making Idols of Modern Men and Myths The Mandela Industry Invictus Idolatry Over 5 Million Reasons Why I Will Not be Voting for the ANC My Meeting with Nelson Mandela Part 1 My Meeting with Nelson Mandela Part 2 Resistance to Revolution
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