02 June 2006

The Gods Must Be Crazy

I've seen this one a zillion times, but it's still so incredibly funny. Also, I've always thought of this film as being primarily 'slapstick' humour but actually the screenplay is really good (the story is much less linear than in the sequel), and so is the cinematography.
There is a special feature on the DVD about the main actor, N!xau, and his home area twenty years after the film was shot. Life has improved for the Bushmen in independent Namibia, but on the other hand they've also lost their 'primitive innocence' (supposing what the film showed about their life was true in the first place).
N!xau is shown in the special feature a few months (or even weeks) before his death. What a charismatic person. He was shown speaking with school children in his home area; they listened to him very carefully.
Through life's strange coincidences, I've happened to read this very morning a short article about the plight of Bushmen in Botswana. Apparently, they're less well treated there than in Namibia. Oddly enough, the film The Gods Must Be Crazy was officially marketed as 'Botswanan' back in the eighties because of the ban on apartheid South Africa at the time.

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