Review: 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom'

Bangalore: Based on Nelson Mandela's 1995 eponymous autobiography, the film showcases snatches of Mandela's life in an episodic-cum-documentary manner - as a lawyer, anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician-cum-activist who was elected the president of South Africa in 1994.

What the film misses out is his third marriage to Graca Machel and his last days.

Laden with dramatically clichéd and generic rousing scenes, director Justin Chadwick's 'Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom', set against the backdrop of long-established institutional racism, is a far cry from an awe-inspiring and stimulating biopic.

It gives an insight into Mandela's persona not as a hero, but as an ordinary man who is capable of succumbing to lust. The film also showcases the history of South African freedom struggle against apartheid.

"I dream the same dream, night after night. I am coming back home to Orlando... they seem fine getting along with their lives, but they do not see me..." a recurring voiceover bookmarks the film that begins with a montage of kids playing in the wilderness of the golden hued South Africa summer.

A little while later, again in a voiceover, Mandela explains why his father named him, 'Rolihlahla'. "My father called me a trouble maker... but I wanted to make my family proud," he says defending himself.

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