Winnie Mandela Reviews

Winnie Mandela tries to have it both ways as a conventional biopic and as a warts-and-all glimpse into a contentious figure, but it fails at being both by never digging deep into the material. It’s all handsome surfaces, Clint Eastwood style cinematography (so much blue filter), and a solid lead performance from Jennifer Hudson in service of an awkward final product. The tonal shifts are jarring, and the script is a succession of events with little that comes before or after anyone scene that figures prominently shortly thereafter.

Though it is a fascinating mess to watch. For a film dubbed Winnie Mandela, the first half of the film sure is devoted primarily to Nelson Mandela. It would be impossible to make a movie about either figure without the other appearing in a centralized role, but Winnie is shoved to the side for large chunks of time despite being the title character. This isn’t just a travesty for how it sidelines Jennifer Hudson’s strong performance, but it makes us focus in on Terrence Howard’s anemic one. Howard is a fine actor, but he doesn’t have the gravitas that Idris Elba and Morgan Freeman brought to the same role.

Even worse is how the film can’t make up its mind about what it wants to say about Winnie Mandela. Racism was an all-consuming, all-encompassing problem with Apartheid era South Africa, but Winnie Mandela gives us Elias Koteas as the face of it and makes him a poorly written grotesque caricature. Then there’s the problem with Winnie’s transition from non-violent protest to necklacing and operating a roving band of thugs, it just happens. The complexity and continued political and social relevance of the themes and lives at play here are smothered and smoothed flat to fit into neat check-boxes.

The one time Winnie Mandela rises to the material is the mid-section where she is placed in solitary confinement. She refuses to break down, becomes defiant, and begins singing to herself and befriending the ants in her cell in order to keep her sanity. It’s a moment where the film roars loudly when so much of it is a dry, basic history lesson completely lacking in nuance. Hudson not only proves that her Oscar winning work in Dreamgirls was no fluke in this section, but that she’s wasted potential in a few of her most recent film roles. Watch the film for her, but be prepared for a film that dresses up its leading actress and then gives her nowhere to go.