Film Forum

U.S., 1989
Directed by Euzhan Palcy
Based on Andre Brink’s A Dry White Season
Starring Donald Sutherland, Janet Suzman, Susan Sarandon, Marlon Brando
Approx. 107 minutes. 35mm.

“First-rate agitprop about the ruthlessness of South African apartheid, directed by Euzhan Palcy (SUGAR CANE ALLEY) and adapted from Andre Brink’s novel by Palcy and Colin Welland. Like CRY FREEDOM and A WORLD APART, this 1989 film concentrates on white rebels in South Africa, but it goes substantially further in its depiction of black oppression, and of violence in particular, which makes it the most powerful of the three. Donald Sutherland stars as a liberal but blinkered schoolteacher who gradually becomes radicalized after a series of brutal events affecting his gardener that eventually splits his family apart. Susan Sarandon plays a sympathetic journalist, and Marlon Brando, in a juicy comeback cameo that evokes Orson Welles’s Clarence Darrow impersonation in COMPULSION, plays an antiapartheid lawyer. The relentless plot is effectively set up and expertly pursued, and Hugh Masekela makes some striking contributions to Dave Grusin’s musical score. With Janet Suzman, Jürgen Prochnow, and Zakes Mokae.” – Chicago Reader

Reviews

“Euzhan Palcy, a remarkable talent, has kept her undeniably powerful film ablaze with ferocity and feeling.”
– Rolling Stone

“This first Hollywood studio feature with a black female director is a compelling account of a South African who turns against the ruling caste.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian