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The last time the British made a film about an inspirational political figure,
seeking to reclaim his stolen country from colonial oppressors, it was 1982,
with the multi-Oscar-winning Gandhi.
So much has changed since then! Not only was Gandhi’s revolution subsequently
mirrored in South Africa, where an unexpectedly bloodless and graceful end
to apartheid occurred (a merci beau coup, perhaps), but you’d also never
get Kenneth Branagh blacking up for a Nelson Mandela biopic now.
Instead, in 2009, Endgame has Clarke Peters from The Wire, who’s totally
black — as Nelson Mandela; plus Chiwetel Ejiofor — also, literally 100 per
cent not-white — playing Thabo Mbeki as an ANC activist. Obviously Bernard
Cribbins as Oliver Tambo was a bit of a wrong-foot, casting-wise — but no
one said that we had achieved full equality in this country yet. There will
always be improvements that could be made.
Oh, hang on, it’s not Bernard Cribbins at all — it’s the awardwinning South
African actor, director and playwright John Kani! Obviously, given my
formative experiences — Gandhi, Peter Sellers’s Goodness
Gracious Me, all MGM “women of the Orient” played by white actresses
with fake tan and taped-up eyes — I sometimes get confused by all this
stuff.
Endgame was broadcast on Bank Holiday Monday — a day we all know is for Herbie
Goes Bananas, going to a local funfair, maybe even eating a Twirl before
lunchtime. It is a day when the cheery, dumb-ass good times roll.
Typical Channel 4, then, to use our happy, barbecue-and-candyfloss day to
broadcast a heavyweight, 100-minute dramatisation of the end of apartheid.
God, even describing it feels like I’ve just put down an oily bag of rusty
nuts, screws and bolts on the table, with a cheerful “Enjoy your treat,
kids!”
It wasn’t even some gung-ho, Bank Holiday-esque bit of Zulu-style
warfare, or a soupy love-across-the-barricades story, or something where
“the people” inspiringly “unite” to bring about “the end of evil”.
No. Endgame was entirely focused on some meetings in a stately
home in Somerset, where everyone just talked about changes
to future legislation. What a clanging chime of doomathon.
It was of no little surprise, then, to discover that, in the event, Endgame
was a big, glorious punch in the tits — in a good way. The director Peter
Travis (Omagh) had decided to shoot Paula Milne’s clear, hard-working
and ultimately redemptive script like a thriller. As a consequence — with
its cameras peering around corners, and massivo wobble-cam — Endgame
came across like an episode of 24 without the clock, or Jack Bauer,
but the entire fate of South Africa, instead.
In a nutshell, a man called Mark Young (Jonny Lee Miller, speccy, determined
and right on the money) at Consolidated Goldfields sees that the apartheid
regime in South Africa is approaching total political and social sclerosis,
and persuades his company to fund a series of secret meetings, at a stately
home in Devon.
Here, representatives of the South African Government, impartial observers and
the ANC can discuss how this could be their single chance to operate on the
cancer of apartheid, which is slowly killing the whole country.
What begins in distrust, shouting and lots of looking out of windows,
pensively, ends with everyone chilling out, bitching about the British
weather, and crying around the TV as they watch Mandela finally being
released from prison.
It was played pretty much as a two-piece between Ejiofor as Mbeki, and William
Hurt as Professor Willie Esterhuyse. Hurt had the less showy role — quiet,
liberal determination to do “the right thing” — but knocked it straight down
the line; Ejiofor took his career up a notch, playing a man who had to
swallow his own anger, persuade the ANC to start a ceasefire, and then act
with calm and forgiveness when F. W. de Klerk’s Government finally made its
big offer: universal suffrage. For the record, it should be noted that
Clarke Peters had little to do as Mandela other than look noble, and as a
result was a trifle “meh”. Perhaps it would have been better if Cribbins had
had a pop at it after all.
But where Endgame had promised so much tedium, but delivered so
much pleasure, it was a slightly reversed situation with Compulsion.
All the pre-publicity for this Ray Winstone/Parminder Nagra drama was that,
basically, it was going to be filthy. A total sex-down. A rumpo-mania
bumcollision. It promised sure-fire TV seximagery in the bank — destined to
nestle next to Joanne Whalley lubing up Michael Gambon’s leg-dandruff with
E45 cream in The Singing Detective, pretty much all of A
Sense of Guilt, and Christopher Eccleston saying “You need a doctor,”
and then kissing Rose, Season One, Episode 12 of the new Doctor Who.
It turned out, however, that there was hardly any shagging in it at all —
scarcely enough intercourse to wet the back of a stamp, all told. The first
50 minutes didn’t have any crumpeteering whatsoever — it was all about
establishing how the wealthy Indrani family’s driver, Flowers (Winstone),
had a burning, crushed lust for their spoilt 21-year-old daughter, Anjika
(Nagra). “He’s creepy. He keeps looking at me,” Nagra shivered — little
knowing that, the minute she left the room, Flowers was taking her
discarded, black, silk elbow-length gloves, and inhaling her residual
palm-sweat like hash smoke. Then — further delaying mattress-abuse — there
was a whole load of motivation-stuff to be done: hammering home that Anjika
was being forced into an arranged marriage with the cockish, bouffanted
Hardik — a bad thing; a thing that was going to make her have
to have sex with Ray Winstone at some point.
Finally, 51 minutes in, Anjika realised she was trapped, and wept in the back
of her limousine — all liquid eyeliner and Swarovski crystal tears. Winstone
turned round to face her — leather upholstery creaking, kinkily, as he
moved. “I can sort him out for you — but you gotta be nice
to me,” he said — eyes calm, lips flushing, leather gloves on the leather
steering wheel.
Three minutes later, Hardik was framed with a couple of grams of coke, and
Flowers was in an hotel room, making sure Anjika kept her side of the
bargain.
“We’ve got all night,” Flowers said, slowly taking off her coat, as Anjika
cried again.
Of course, because this was a drama, and not youporn.com; it wasn’t
simply Winstone violating the weeping bird from ER. First up, there
was a fade-out before we saw anything frisky — a decision that made me feel
like all those Everton fans who were outraged that ITV1 switched to an ad
break, just before Dan Gosling scored in the fourth round replay. Come on!
It’s been nearly an hour now, and all we’ve had is a glove-sniff!
And second — and perhaps more importantly — it subsequently turned out that
Anji, like Fallon Carrington-Colby before her, actually liked a
borderline sadomasochistic affair with her chauffeur.
“Take me to bed,” she was ordering Flowers, five minutes later, after a
difficult day meant that, chillax-wise, it was either ten minutes with the
Clairol footspa or a quickie with an obsessive retainer.
“Say please,” he said.
“Will you take me to bed. Please. Take me to bed, please,” Anjika said, in
what seemed like a plea — but, as the next 50 minutes made clear, was, in
fact, an order.
Because in the end, Compulsion was not about absolutely filthy Moon-sex
— now they tell us — but about power. The spoilt millionaire’s
daughter did, of course, turn out to be more powerful than the lovelorn
chauffeur. She tired of him, and called him “fat, ugly and old”. He went a
bit Shakespeare and stabbed himself in the heart while giving her a “goodbye
suicide rape” — which, for reasons too complex to go into here, was
motivated by wanting to help her out of a bit of a tight spot. It would have
been a difficult plot to explain to a child; or a nan.
Nagra had flashes — not literal flashes: there were no tits; not even arse.
Can you see the continuing disappointment here? But what should have been a
big Scarlett O’Hara turn really came to life only when she was begging
Flowers for sex.
Winstone, on the other hand, nailed the tragedy of howling and ultimately
unrequited desire — intent and grateful when he was having sex; vulnerable
and still when he wasn’t. But of course, he wasn’t having sex most of the
time. Honestly, it was a bloody outrage.
ER, and the good news was that one lucky grandma in Seattle got
to be first greeter on Dr Ross’s (George Clooney) much-awaited return to the
show. She got first dibs gazing upon that still-handsome face — all charcoal
eyes and musky, liberal, politically active cologne.
The bad news, however, was that she was getting all this face-time with Dr
Ross because he was telling her that her grandson was brain-dead, with no
corneal or gag reflex; and that they’d really like to chop him up, and ship
his heart, kidneys, tendons and bones off to a donor centre in Chicago. You
know, you win some, you lose some.
So, yes, Clooney returned for one episode only, to wrap up a few loose ends
before the show concludes, later this year. The big loose end was, of
course, Dr Ross’s on/off relationship with Nurse Hathaway (Julie Margulies)
— which ultimately ended up with him in bed with her; doing kissing, and
having naked arms, and so forth. This was all very good for the morale of
the womenfolk of the world, in these times of recession and upheaval, etc.
Such is the measure of Clooney’s alpha glitter-dust glow that all reviews
failed to mention the second storyline — poor old Dr Carter (Noah Wyle) also
returned to the show, dying of kidney failure!
It was a pertinent illustration of why the show — which never became dumb —
just slowly but inexorably slid in the ratings after Clooney’s big-screen
charisma left. And, also, the lengths that any other actor has to go to get
attention when Clooney’s in the room.
