One or two things too funny to miss

I can now honestly say I have seen the worst movie ever filmed. If you hear anything about Crime, that debuted at the Grahamstown Festival, please, spare your precious hours and take my word for it: do NOT go see it.

Expecting an intense postmodern political narrative, we instead witnessed what appeared to be a shallow fourteen year old's rendition of a thought-provoking drama. I got worried when the director introduced the film and said he did not think we would enjoy it- if it's your art and you know it has something to say, don't apologize. It only went downhill from there.

The filmmaking itself was terrible and cliche, even by low-budget standards. The dialogue was also loaded with generalizations and blatent, painfully cliche, remarks quite clearly not the character's own. I felt horrible for the poor actors roped into this drama, with no room at all to develop their characters.

Basically, the premise was to make a movie showing the realities of crime in South Africa. It was really a good thought, trying to make something to provoke conversation about the problem, and help people see it in a new light. It was just a terrible execution. The violence felt gratuitous, and there was a very graphic rape scene. While the director expected us to feel challenged by these, our discussions were not about the horror of the crime, but about his horrible job of creating any real issue to discuss. All in all, it produced a conversation about why the movie did not at all succeed in its goal. The audience got a chance to Q&A a bit with the director, and his answers felt shallow and suspiciously sounded of bs'ing.

Anyways, I could go on for a while about why I hated that. The funny part comes now. MaryAnne and I are sitting in the theatre cafe today, and the guys from the filmmaking crew are walking down the street, publicizing their film. We kindly thanked but no thanked their offer for flyers, and were getting ready to leave when the director recognized us as being part of the group that came last night and asked if he could talk to us. We said we could spare a few minutes, but only a few since we were meeting people (really, we were.) He sat down, and began talking to MaryAnn, probably the wise choice if he correctly guaged my general reaction. He promptly called the waitress over, and paid for our lunch! He had us cornered. A conversation of us kindly trying to explain the issues we had, without him really trying to listen, ensued. All in all, funny later. He seemed nice enough, and I think he has a heart for what he's doing.

Well we are off to finish our final papers and go shop around the market!