Reviewed by Screenjabber
Stars John Malkovich, Jessica Haines, Eriq Ebouaney, Fiona Press,
Antoinette Engel, Paula Arundell, Scott Cooper, Charles Tertiens | Written by Anna Maria Monticelli
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 120 minutes | Directed by Steve Jacobs
"A mad heart acts on impulses irrespective of right and wrong," Malkovich’s romantic poetry professor David Lurie explains to his class in a Cape Town university. While the lecture’s topic is Wordsworth, it could just as well describe David’s own particular lifestyle, and the thematical contents of Jacob’s film.
A predatory womaniser, seducing a student kick starts the downfall of David’s professional and personal life. Relocating from the city to the rural farm his daughter lives on, his life and understanding of that which his actions have done come in for a rude awakening as he is forced to challenge his own choices and ‘acts of impulse,’ after a violent house invasion leaves him in hospital and his daughter brutally gang-raped.
Post-apartheid South Africa makes for a tumultuous setting. Racial tensions bubble away beneath the surface, the past haunting the present in obvious and less conspicuous ways, and gender roles and the politics of power come in for healthy rumination, as land ownership, and by proxy racial histories of the country, come to the fore. Malkovich is on fantastic form as the impulsive, unapologetic ‘educator’ who receives a bruising lesson himself; leering and unrepentant, his actions often appalling, he’s a repulsive individual, his life unburdened by the hypocrisy that resides in others, and Malkovich handles his transforming experience and aftermath well but this is no tale of redemption or a life corrected by journey’s end.
Rather the film questions and challenges our expectations and assumptions about ourselves, how we act and how we see others. Failing to protect his daughter from the attack, David wants to see their assailants brought to justice, especially when one of their attackers’ identity comes to light, yet Lucy will not press charges. Cowed by her experience yet oddly defiant, she refuses to upset the local order, no matter how it may manipulating her, but she will not move from her home either. While it loses focus slightly in the third act, Disgrace is beautifully shot and superbly acted, and the film’s uneasy loyalties and ambiguous empathies make for a provocative film, both politically and personally.
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