Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

This review may contain spoilers.

This is such an inspiring and accurate film that I think it might be one of the best biopic films we'll see of 2014. I give Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom a 7.5/10.

I enjoyed how Mandela was an accurate representation of Nelson Mandela's life, no glorification or putting him on a pedestal; we get the good and the bad. I was inspired and absolutely fell in love with the last two thirds of the film. The music in this was incredible as well and really set the atmosphere of a lot of the scenes and a lot of the imagery. Speaking of which the cinematography and the inclusion of original footage from events as well as photo stills was so incredibly breath taking in how it was used.

The pacing in this movie is not the best, it can drag on in places and there were some scenes that felt unnecessary. I also disliked the first third of this film, the scenes were too short and there wasn't enough context; action just happened and we were forced to accept it and weren't given any time to process it.

They could not have gotten a better man to play Nelson Mandela, I dris Elba brought the charisma and the power behind such a tremendous role to the screen. Naomie Harris, who played Winnie Madikizela, was someone I loved to see and emphasised with so much but her character development was hard to watch because the white oppression in her country broke the kind woman she was. I also have to commend Tony Kgoroge, who played Walter Sisulu, for just the tiny touches he added to the film; the small displays of care for his companions and respect for his people and for the entirety of South Africa.

I never knew enough of the struggle for equality in South Africa. I know that there's still a long way to go there still now, same for race relations in a large number of places globally. I think racial discrimination is a sick thing, it shouldn't really exist but it does. I think that in this day and age we've come so far but there's still a lot that needs doing. We've come through some years of the worst discrimination between races that exist and it's up to us to educate ourselves about this, recognise it and be better than people who view racism as an acceptable way of life.