Movie Haiku - The Leader, His Driver, & The Driver's Wife

www.nickbroomfield.com

Dir: Nick Broomfield

Cast: Eugene Terre'Blanche, JP Meyer, Anita Meyer, Nick Broomfield

Eugene's not happy
Nick's late cos he stopped for tea
don't overtake me!

Continuing my pledge to review every film that I see on the big screen I've taken a bit of a departure this week with a retro screening of this documentary from 1991 which was shown as part of a Nick Broomfield event at the Pavilion Theatre. The Leader, His Driver, & The Driver's Wife sees Nick and his team in South Africa following Eugene Terre'Blanche, the leader of the white supremacist AWB Afrikaner Party. At a party rally the cameraman is attacked by a party member and knocked to the ground. Terre'Blanche's driver, JP, takes pity on the crew and offers to help secure an interview. This is no easy task as the elusive Terre'Blanche keeps missing every scheduled appointment, so in the meantime we get to learn more about JP and meet his scatty wife, Anita. When Terre'Blanche finally does promise a definite interview, Nick turns up five minutes late. The leader is furious, bellowing at the film-maker until he confesses he was late because he'd had stopped for a cup of tea on the way. He's such a dominating man, you actually feel quite concerned for Nick's well-being at times (the scene where he berates Nick for filming him driving is also a worthy example). It's a fantastic piece of work from the legendary Broomfield, edited deftly to follow the chase for an interview. As with many other examples of this type of film-making, it is often the events that happen along the way, or the reactions of the supporting cast that build up a fascinating character study and in most cases supercede the actual interview itself. Driver JP is a character on the edge, wanting to quit his prominent role at one moment, yet advocating the death of black South Africans the next. Unlike Terre'Blanche, you feel some sympathy for him and Anita, yet at other times are made well aware of the threat he could pose. Despite the serious subject matter there's also a lot of humour in the film, some from Nick himself (as the faux-naive film-maker, a role which Louis Theroux now apes so successfully) and many from the matter-of-fact statements from the party supporters who are just unbelievably ill-educated. You really must see the scene in which two locals try to chat up Nick's female assistant with their "pretty girl" joke, it's a priceless moment. I spoke to Nick after the screening and he confirmed that he's just finished filming a follow-up piece to this documentary which he hopes will get a cinema release next year - it will be very interesting to catch up with these characters again fourteen years later.

soulmining rating ****