Amita RajGuru, Post 2

Sarafina!, 1992, Darrell Roodt

She was their teacher. They were her hope. Directed by Darrell Roodt, Sarafina! is based on this hit broadway musical. The film adaptation, while filled with a lot of movement and a few cheesy musical sing-a-longs, is the heartwarming story of a South African teacher who gave hope to her students of racial equality during the Apartheid. The beginning of the movie is made up of a sequence of slow motion medium close-up shots which, during the musical sections, cuts to long shots that pan across the crowd of people. Full and establishing shots are also used to show street views and large crowds of people.

Most of the shots are never static – instead, they have a Ken Burns flair and partially zoom in during medium close-up shots. This sets up a dreamlike quality to the movie, which is only enhanced with the unnatural spontaneous song and dance. The Ken Burns effect makes the characters become more recognizable as the voiceover follows the images shown to the viewer. For example, during a discussion of hope through the Apartheid era, the viewer sees a medium close-up shot of Mary Masembuko as she looks proudly to the crowd of young faces. Her peaceful expression, and the Ken Burns effect, foreshadows her importance as a character in the lives of her students.

The Ken Burns effect quickly disappears as the film progresses and the static long shots create more of a documentary style – perhaps to make the actual plot more believable and less fanciful as a musical can become. Also, in scenes with groups of people, the camera tends to focus more on the people in the background and blurs the foreground image.

For deep and emotional dialogue, close-up shots are used to create intimacy with the characters as well as to highlight the importance of the conversation. For example, the conversation between Sarafina and her mother is a very personal and heated exchange. Discussing their current living situation, Sarafina speaks about how she is unhappy with her life – her mother defends herself by saying it’s the best she could provide. The intensity of the conversation rises as the camera gets closer and closer to the characters’ faces until they are framed in close-up shots. The rapid cuts back and forth between the characters increases the speed of the conversation until the climax at the end of the dialogue – when Sarafina declares that she would rather die like her father did in battle, than live like her mother as a servant.

The establishing shots in the film are never completely still – they usually have at least one person or character moving. For example, after the “Soweto Street Fighting Song”, an establishing shot of a lively road is used to show Sarafina walking up to Mary Masembuko’s house, thus situating the character.

There wasn’t always sufficient headroom in some of the medium close-up shots, such as when Mary Masembuko’s class is taken over by a male teacher. His medium close-up shots don’t show his whole but, but get cut off just above his hairline. This may be intentional to undermine his character, even though we do see more of him in the medium shots that preceed and follow it. As the viewer gets closer to his face, however, more of his frustration is accentuated in his eyes.

Over-the-shoulder shots are used frequently in the film, but the most effective and memorable use of it was in a low angle shot of Constable Sabela when he is violently kicking another man. This shot not only provides a dynamic scene for the viewer, but also gives Sabela more power because the viewer has to look up at him.

Point-of-view shots are not really used in this film except for when there are scenes involving cars. The camera sits on the dashboard of the car and shakes with it as the car rolls over the bumpy dirt roads. For example, at one point, two characters are sitting in the back of a car traveling on an unpaved village road – one man is holding a gun to the other’s head and yelling at him. When the camera looks out the front of the moving car, and then cuts back to the men in the back seat, a sense of urgency is created and danger, which gives the viewer an idea of how the hostage is feeling.

The Ken Burns effect reappears at the end of the film as more intimate conversations take place – especially when Sarafina confronts her mother about killing a man. More full shots are also used to show how the landscape and/or amount of people in the area have changed. For instance, when Sarafina walks back to her village and school, a long shot of her and a close-up of the grass in front of her is used to show her connection to the environment. Similar to Mary Masembuko’s advice on being connected to the Earth and it’s natural rhythm, the high angle of the shot allows the viewer to look down on Sarafina, making her look small. This may be a subconscious message that Sarafina and her story was just a small part, or an example, of what was happening on a larger, more violent scale.