Spoiler
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Sometimes we watch movies to distract ourselves, and sometimes we watch them because we want to experience a kind of truth. The truth in Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight is so searing that I had to turn it off twice to break the tension.
The movie takes place in Africa. The setting is a time of crisis, as colonial Rhodesia transitions to an independent, post-colonial Zimbabwe. If that sounds dry, it is not, for such transitions engulf individuals, much as a tsunami might.
In the movie, we experience the transformational events from the perspective of a child. Happily, the child hired for this role is not an experienced actor, but someone who reacts spontaneously to events, as though living them in the moment.
The producer/writer/director of the film, Embeth Davidtz, did not ask the child to memorize lines. She fed the child words and elicited 'true' reactions by throwing objects or otherwise distracting the child from the professional job at hand.
Truth was possible for Davidtz because she grew up in South Africa, post-colonial Rhodesia's ally during the turbulent times covered in the film. South Africa and Rhodesia shared a past rooted in Afrikaner and British colonialism. Davidtz can tell the story because it is also part of her personal history.
1892 Punch Magazine drawing of Cecile Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia was named. It was Rhodes' ambition to make an English corridor
that stretched from the Cape of South Africa to Cairo Egypt. He believed in the superiority of the English above all other people. One might say he had the quintessential colonial worldview. Public domain
The child in the film is spectacularly effective as a witness. Throughout the film she is trying to make sense of conflicting messages she receives from the adults in her universe. Both Rhodesia and South Africa at the time had a similar social/economic/political framework. In each country a small minority had an iron grip on the land, economy, and politics of nation. That minority was defined by race.
Most of us have heard of Nelson Mandela and his struggle to gain political and economic equality for the majority black population in South Africa. In his country, whites represented about 13% of the population. In Rhodesia, the imbalance between races was even greater. it is estimated that before Zimbabwe's independence, whites represented perhaps 5 to 8 percent of the total population.
Bobo, the child in the film, tries to understand and adapt to the violence essential for maintaining white minority control. And she tries to make sense of the violence inherent in the black majority’s struggle to wrest control of the country from the minority.
The conflict between minority and majority power is not only political. It is personal. There is a social construct that is essential for a small number of people to dominate a much greater majority. That social construct requires the child to learn how to deal with the people around her. These are people she considers to be ‘friends’ and yet she must learn to ‘boss’ them.
The word ‘boss’ has a particular significance in the film. It is the very precise way whites express dominance over blacks.
Bobo describes the look on her mother’s face when she is ‘bossing’. And she describes the look in the black workers’ eyes when they are being ‘bossed’. Sarah, the beloved black domestic servant is told by one of her colleagues that Bobo is already learning to ‘boss’ as the child orders black children to wait on her.
One of the factors that comes through in this child's world experience is the irrationality that pervades her family while it comes to terms with losing everything it has ever known. That irrationality is manifested most glaringly in Bobo's mother, acted by Davidtz herself.
As Rhodesia is collapsing, Bobo’s mother is disintegrating, mentally. It is suggested that she previously had a breakdown, sometime in the past. We’re not sure why that happened, but we learn that one of her children drowned. Bobo mentions that her mother might be going ‘manic’ again, and the child witnesses her mother’s apparent suicide attempt.
The title of the film relates, I believe, to the mother's state of mind, and to denial in the white community as their loss of control becomes inevitable. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is taken from a poem by A.P. Herbert, Don't Let's Go the the Dogs Tonight for Mother Will Be There. The poem partly reads:
Don't let's go to the dogs to-night, For mother will be there. Auntie chooses all the tunes, Uncle bags the best balloons, And all the roundest men in town
The poem goes on:
"When I see my oldest aunties Kicking heels and singing chanties Then I have to stop; All the uncles dance like ladders, All the aunts are built like bladders Just about to pop.
It is not a pleasant image. It is an incongruous scene, almost grotesque, a scene very like one in the movie. After a general election in which a black liberation leader, Robert Mugabe, has won, the whites gather. There is a party, music, drinking. Bobo’s mother becomes drunk and dances obscenely. As her husband tries to come to terms with reality, she is in frantic denial.
As I said at the beginning of this review the film is most essentially about truth. Whose truth? It is a moment in history as understood by Embeth Davidtz. How would the history of that moment be told by the family’s house servant, Sarah? Or its farm worker, Samuel?
After watching the movie I went down a rabbit hole trying to understand the history of that place, at that time. The history of Rhodesia is of course part of a larger story, the story of colonialism in Africa. I don’t know if they teach about that anymore in the history books today. I’m not sure there are even history classes in today’s schools. Sad, because this is not only a human story. This is story that forms the backdrop for our modern world.
How do we understand Africa? How do we understand the Middle East, or Latin America without understanding the geopolitical reality of how those areas were shaped during colonial times?
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is a gripping personal story. It is also a glimpse into a profoundly significant moment in history. The acting is outstanding. The child is a find. Embeth Davidtz is frustrating, cruel, and tragic in her role as Bobo’s mother.
The book is not only Embeth Davidtz’s truth--it is the lived truth of author Alexandra Fuller. Her book, by the same title, is an account of her time as a child in Rhodesia when these events took place. The book tells the story of her family and its final days in Rhodesia before the Mugabe victory.
One of the last scenes in the movie is most illustrative of Bobo’s confusion about her role in the Rhodesian culture. As the family drives away, Samuel, the farmhand looks on. He rasises his arm in a classic black power salute. He has won, Mugabe has won and the white family is leaving. The perplexed child smiles, and raises her arm in the same salute. Samuel recognizes her innocence, his face softens, and he smiles in return.
I highly recommend this film.
The following information is from IMDB:
Director: Embeth Davidtz
Writers: Embeth Davidtz, Alexandra Fuller
Stars: Lexi Venter as Bobo
Embeth Davidtz as Nicola, Bobo's mother
Zikhona Bal as Sarah
I watched the movie on Netflix
Rating: 100/100
