Film Review of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

1. In general, what did you like and dislike about the film?

Usually when I see Idris Elba is in a action movie, like The dark tower or Thor, so, at the beginning was weird to me see him in a political role, but I have to admit that He really surprised to me. I only see the Nelson Mandela character in the movie with Morgan Freeman, so I thought that Mandela was always a peaceful leader, see him like a real person, feeling anger, with radical strategies makes me think about the authenticity in every character, in the real life people isn't perfect, I really love the journey of the character to become the real leader of a divided country.

2. In your own words, how would you compare the "various Mandelas;" the ones from the article and the one from the film?

I imagine that when you becomes a public figure, you never be yourself again, when o many people believes in you, is it common that you doesn't show you real face. I don´t think that a "real Nelson Mandela" exist, for someones, he is the saint who united the country, for others was a traitor to his own cause. But when you gives you entire life to one ideology you lose your identity, your goals is focus to the cause, when you fail, is the people that follow you who suffer, so I imagine that your mind doesn't an individual mind, so influenced, with so many charge on your shoulder and the figure about you that the other people began to imagine becomes more real than you. 


3. What was the role that Winnie Mandela played in the film? Think about the contrast between her and the other ANC members.

In the film, I think Winnie Mandela was a symbol, the figure that Nelson Mandela could have become, She is a character with so many hate inside her, but you really understand her, the horrible things that she had to go through, loose your husband, your freedom, your life. If you lose so many thing fighting the only way to survive is keep it fighting, and the anger help you to keep the struggle, so for Mandela, Winnie (at the end of the movie) is the fight against the hate,  she is the faction of our principal character that remind him what means fight with hate, when he left her, Mandela left behind that feeling.  


4. How do you compare the role of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress in the struggle against the apartheid and in the post-apartheid South Africa to the Concertación and their role in the struggle against Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship and in post-dictatorial Chile?

After reading this cuestion I think the whole situation with more perspective, because when you see a movie you don't feel the weight of time, in real life, the suffer is deeper, the hate don't disappear at the end of credits. When I see my own country, I don't found a figure like Mandela, Aylwin wasn´t a leader like him or any of the future president, there is not a political who really has reconciled both sides.  At least in Chile I don´t feel a real effort to overcome the past, from public policies and laws that change something or that compense for the past. The shadow of the previous dictatorship still remains on us, and its legacy is still mantained.