Solid war drama with plenty to get involved in.

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2013)

The outpost at Rourke's Drift was a mission, a locale not too dissimilar to what a hospital might look like - a place designed to house the God loving Christian, the sick, the ill, the frail – the weak. It's no surprise that Cy Endfield's 1964 war film Zulu is as good as it is, the whole things has this vulnerable, weak and frail atmosphere about it whenever its depicting scenes in and around this base. When the time comes for a few thousand strong indigenous Zulu force to hit them with mostly everything they've got, as well as a little more in the form of rifles they've acquired along the way, it's little surprise you watch the chaos unfold from behind your hands. At the core of the warring and hostilities is a curious dynamic which, I think, has no doubt contributed to its watchability down the years: strength in numbers against strength in firepower; an invading force greatly outnumbering a surrounded force who're better equipped, but are stuck in one place.
For all its fame and reputation of being a resounding film about triumph and against-the-odds victories, Zulu will open with a crushing British defeat. That is to say, it will open with the reporting of a crushing British defeat: the images of a burning carriage and its load put to a downcast voice over informing us of the bad news does not begin the film in a triumphant, resounding manner. The Zulus, then, are capable of such things; are capable of such victories, and our first sighting of them pushes them into this bracket of the unreal, of the uncanny – an eerie celebratory dance at their camp in the early evening with songs in a language few non-native people will have ever heard up to this point in history, almost placing them into a realm of the supernatural.
Present at this ceremony, however, are a British preacher and his daughter; Endfield's way of visually contrasting just how unalike these two later warring factions really are. The Brits here are stiff and rigid in their sitting and watching, as if unable to look away out of being too transfixed or frightened or a mixture of both by what they see, where the Zulus jump and bounce around out in the open in a very animated fashion. The daughter knows very little of what she sees and must ask her father, who's expertise in these people is enough to answer her questions. This mixture of fear, ignorance and fascination that the white Brits have for these people is established to be present within these African-set circles very early and through this otherwise irrelevant pairing. Later, the film will explode into a procession of violence and warfare with these sorts of conflicts at the core of the warring.
Not so far away at the aforementioned outpost are a group of about a hundred British soldiers, most of them injured or wounded in some fashion. Almost all of them are bored with this slow recovering process – these soldiers kill time with meagre games of shuffling cups in a random order after placing a bullet under one of them. These troops are not, however, stock filmic cannon fodder present so as to be blown apart later on: Endfield allows some of them to be friendly, others to be unkind; some are sexist, one or two of them are criminals - others even enjoying singing. At the core of them is Michael Caine's Lieutenant: Gonville Bromhead, a young man who's softly spoken; elegant and cuts an erect figure but will eventually traverse from such things to this frizzy haired, gunpowder stained character who bellows orders out to his troops in a way it didn't seem possible at the beginning of the film.
When it becomes apparent an attack on their outpost might happen, Bromhead mentions some of his relatives from centuries ago and how their achievements in battle at respective places such as Waterloo and Quebec instills him with pride. To this extent, the film and its later warfare will carry more of a personalised air for Bromhead, as he tries to place himself in a similar bracket as those in his family that preceded him in proving his worth in battle. From some substantial beginnings arrives the assault, something which keeps getting worse and worse as one's sanctuary of being inside one of the few buildings is stripped away and the solider count is gradually eroded. The action and warfare wisely avoids falling into a trap that might see it labelled as 'exciting' – but it is a stupendous display of second unit spectacle interspersed by these diegetic chorus' sung by both sides, in what is an eerie instance of original score moving aside for internal music provided by the actual soldiers fighting within the scenes. As far as war films go, and with constructive character studies as well as a sense of film making prose at work, you could do a lot worse than Zulu.