CINEMA: Little Fire in ‘Flame’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Josephine Masimba

HARARE, Jun 18 1996 (IPS) - ‘Flame’, Zimbabwe’s first feature film on the black struggle for independence, bobs and weaves around the issues but never tackles any of them with passion or confidence.

The film has won acclaim abroad, but kicked up controversy at home where it premiered recently.

Before it was even completed, police attempted to impound the film for alleged “obscenity”. It also did not find favour with the War Veterans’ Association and politicians, due to what they saw as its less-than-heroic depiction of the war.

There was much criticism then of a rape scene, all overlaid by mutterings about a white person – director Ingrid Sinclair – making a film about a black struggle.

Sinclair’s response was that her film was less about the war that liberated Zimbabwe in 1980 than about the experiences of women who fought to end white minority rule, on whose true-life accounts the plot is based.

On both counts, however, ‘Flame’ is disappointing and strangely passionless. The film has the feel of the documentaries that have won Sinclair respect, rather than the emotion home audiences would expect. It is devoid of drama, anger and fear — the realities of Rhodesia’s brutal and bitter conflict.

Thus, when a neighbour betrays Florence’s father to the authorities for allegedly conniving with nationalist guerrillas, his family looks on in a silence that borders on indifference as white soldiers drag him away, at a time when that almost certainly meant torture or death.

‘Flame’ starts in modern-day Zimbabwe. Ex-combattant Florence (Marian Kunonga) leaves her rural home to find her childhood and wartime friend Nyasha (Ulla Mahaka) in Harare. She gets a cold reception from the city slicker her friend has become and who would rather forget the past. Then the film flashes back to their childhood.

The two girls’ first meeting with nationalist guerrillas is when they attend a village ‘pungwe’ — an all-night political rally. Florence sees Comrade Danger (Norman Madawo) and is apparently attracted as much by him as by his ideology, but her real dream is of an orthodox rural lifestyle with a husband and children. Out of step with tradition, Nyasha longs to study and become financially independent.

Even in present-day Zimbabwe, such situations are common. But the factors that may reinforce or undermine the positions of these two girls are skimmed over.

“It’s not very representative,” comments visiting U.S. lawyer Angela Williams. “For people from outside it doesn’t inform them at all about the condition of women or the war.”

Another flaw in ‘Flame’ is that poor handling of the characters’ motivation means that their actions often seem little more than ploys to prod on a plot that has difficulty flowing.

For example, after Florence’s father is arrested, she talks Nyasha into joining the guerrillas, overcoming her reluctance by reminding her that they promised scholarships. The two girls set off to join the freedom fighters in Mozambique, struggling for days through the Rhodesian bush.

But the motives and courage that took these two young girls off to war never come across clearly. In another instance of incoherence, Comrade Che (Moise Matura), a guerrilla who rapes Florence — later, inexplicably, apologises. He tells her: “War changes everything, you know. Sometimes we forget that we’re human beings. I’m sorry for what I did.”

Nonetheless, some scenes of life in the guerrilla camps are quite well done. And Zimbabwean audiences will love and most likely be able to sing along to the heartfelt renditions of morale- boosting ‘chimurenga’ (revolutionary) songs used by the insurgents to politicise the masses.

The film bravely touches on ugly facts of rebel life such as sexual abuse and the torture of recruits. It offers a realistic depiction of paunchy, male guerrilla leaders treating themselves to a booze-up while the ordinary troops are starving.

Two of the “chefs” (as the leaders were called) sexually assault Florence and Nyasha (now Comrades Flame and Liberty respectively).

And one is almost convinced of the film’s verisimilitude after a guerrilla who is whipped while the others belt out a chimurenga song gets up, raises his fist and shouts: “Pamberi ne hondo. Pasi ne musakanzwa. (Forward in the war. Down with indiscipline).”

Focusing on two female soldiers, ‘Flame’ challenges revisionists who claim that women were never combattants but merely provided logistical support for male heroes.

It also broaches the plight of the country’s liberators, forgotten after independence and reduced to watching simulated combat on televised Heroes’ Day celebrations.

Nor can the film be slammed for not offering fairy tale solutions to female oppression, which continues in many forms 16 years after women helped overthrow one oppressive system. The women, who want little more than to be able to live as they see fit, seem to be punished for having any aspirations at all.

Thus ‘Flame’, who dreams of domestic bliss, has a child by a rapist only to lose both baby and father in a Rhodesian attack, while her post-war marriage to Comrade Danger is viable only for as long as she plays the subservient, traditional wife. The city is equally ruthless with Nyasha. Despite her hard work and guts, she is mocked as a whore of the “chefs”, a commonly held view of female ex-combattants.

Acclaimed at the Cannes festival, ‘Flame’ which has just been premiered here, is likely to share the commercial success of the spate of liberal reworkings of black South Africans’ fight to end apartheid that it so strongly resembles, albeit without their epic sweep and their exploitation of Southern Africa’s majestic beauty.

But ultimately, ‘Flame’ fails to fire the imagination. Often, scenes are short and snappy, but are not developed and therefore lack coherence. It is fraught with inconsistency, omission and other failings although managing to capture elements of Zimbabwean social reality.

The film proceeds with little regard for variations in tone and pace. In one sequence too absurd to be plausible, Flame single- handedly ambushes a Rhodesian army truck. Then, in the words of one viewer, “she realises she is pregnant and minutes later she gives birth” to Che’s son.

‘Flame’s’ weaknesses may be due to the constant re-writing of the script and the inconsistent directing that are rumoured to have plagued the film’s shooting. Whatever the reasons, one is left with the impression of a film ill at ease with its subject matter, observing and recording matters of life and death with a clinical detachment worthy of a Robbe-Grillet.

It sputters and flickers, but never really comes to life. Rather than the ‘Flame’ it declares itself to be, Zimbabwe’s first feature film on the liberation war proves to be a bit of a damp squib.

CINEMA: Little Fire in ‘Flame’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Josephine Masimba

HARARE, Jun 18 1996 (IPS) - ‘Flame’, Zimbabwe’s first feature film on the black struggle for independence, bobs and weaves around the issues but never tackles any of them with passion or confidence.
(more…)