Disgrace

Plot synopsis:
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching one class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs, plying her with alcohol and other actions that arguably amount to rape"; later, when she stops attending his class as a result, he falsifies her grades. Lurie refuses to stop the affair, even after being threatened by Melanie's erstwhile boyfriend, who knocks all the papers off Lurie's desk, and her father, who confronts him but whom David runs from. This affair is thereafter revealed to the school, amidst a climate of condemnation for his allegedly predatory acts, and a committee is convened to pass judgement on his actions. David refuses to read Melanie's statement, defend himself, or apologize in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his post. Lurie is working on an opera concerning Lord Byron's final phase of life in Italy which mirrors his own life in that Byron is living a life of hedonism and excess and is having an affair with a married woman.
Dismissed from his teaching position, he takes refuge on his lesbian daughter Lucy's farm in the Eastern Cape. For a time, his daughter's influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life; for example, in attending farmers markets where Lucy sells her wares, and in working with Petrus, a polygamously-married black African whose farm borders Lucy's and who nominally works for Lucy as a "dog-man" (Lucy boards dogs). But the balance of power in the country is shifting. Shortly after becoming comfortable with rural life, he is forced to come to terms with the aftermath of an attack on the farm. Three men, who claim to need Lucy's phone to call for aid for a sick sister, force their way into the farmhouse. The men are armed with firearms, rape Lucy, and attempt to kill David by setting him on fire. In addition to these actions, they also shoot a collection of caged dogs which Lucy is boarding, in an action which David later muses was done since black people in South Africa are taught to fear dogs as symbols of white power and oppression. The men drive off in David's car: it is never recovered and they are never caught, although police once contact David to come pick up "his" car, which is in fact evidently not his car (different colour and registration number). Newspapers spell Lurie's name inaccurately ("Lourie"), meaning nothing will tie his persona of disgraced academic to the attack.
Lucy becomes apathetic and agoraphobic after the attack. David presses her to report the full circumstances to the police, but she does not. She has become pregnant by one of the rapists, but ignores advice to terminate the pregnancy. She does not want to, and in fact does not, discuss the attack with David until much later. Meanwhile, David suspects Petrus being complicit in the attack. This suspicion is strengthened when one of the attackers, a young man named Pollux, attends one of Petrus's parties and is claimed by Petrus as a kinsman. Pollux ultimately comes to live with Petrus, and spies on Lucy bathing. When David catches Pollux doing this, Lucy forces David to desist from any retribution. David surmises that ultimately, Lucy will be forced into marrying Petrus and giving him her land, and it appears that Lucy is resigned to this contingency.
Returning home to his house in Cape Town, David finds that his house has been broken into in his long absence, by either looters or students protesting his affair with Melanie. Either way, his house is in shambles. He attempts to attend a theatre performance starring Melanie, but is harassed into leaving by the same boyfriend who had earlier threatened him. He also attempts to apologize to Melanie's father, leading to an awkward meeting with Melanie's little sister, and Melanie's father, who insists he stay for dinner. Melanie's father insists that his forgiveness is irrelevant: Lurie must follow his own path to redemption.
At novel's end, Lurie returns to Lucy's farm. He works with Bev Shaw, a friend of Lucy's, who keeps an animal shelter and frequently euthanizes animals, which David then disposes of. Shaw has earlier had an affair with Lurie, despite David finding her physically unattractive. Lurie has been keeping a resilient stray from being euthanized, but at the end of the novel "gives him up" to Bev Shaw's euthanasia.

Tags: violence

Review:
He quotes William Blake as his sole defence, "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." His retreat to his daughter's remote farm entangles their individual problems in the realities of life in the post apartheid era.Director Steve Jacobs and screenwriter Anna Maria Monticelli continue their professional and personal partnership as co-producers.
Eriq Ebouaney strikes the right tone in a difficult role as Petrus, the black farmer and her co-landholder.Disgrace is an adaptation that more than does justice to the novel.
Lucy's compromise and David's acceptance of her decision offer such slim hope.We are left with little doubt that this is an allegory for the issues facing modern multi-racial South Africa.
John Malkovich portrays an esteemed Capetown professor who lives somewhat in his own ivory tower, has an affair with a young student and finds his idyllic life in academia and ego-gratification shattered.He decides somewhat on a whim to visit his daughter Lucy, who runs a farm on the South African coast.
It is a small cohesive village and she is on the outside looking in, a veritable intruder, in more ways than one.The story develops and foreshadows the violence which is beset upon Lucy and her father by a local disturbed boy who rapes her, along with a gang of two other young men.
The film at times does not translate this subtlety, and we are left feeling annoyed with Lucy and her victimized state.Malkovich is good here, as usual, with an affected but acceptable accent, a restrained but marked need for sexuality in his later years.
"Put it out of its misery", he tells her...and we almost imagine he is speaking of his own life instead of the dogs.Overall a worthy film, although the book is probably much clearer in intent and I am now intrigued to read the authors works regarding animals and the fragility of life.
This austere movie based on a Booker prize winning novel be J.M.Coertzee will leave you breathless as the performances by Malkovich and his co star Jessica Haines are both very compelling.A story perhaps without a beginning or an ending and not a movie for the brainless, may suit more than one viewing to figure out all the symbolism here of post apartheid South Africa.
Its central character is a an English professor in South Africa and his relationship with a number of women including one of his students, his daughter and a lover.
It's about race, sex, revenge, redemption, moral ambiguities, what is right and what is wrong; above all it's about the complex nation that is South Africa.Having read the novel, I can say that the film is very faithful to the book.
After having read J.M. Coetzee's complex, disturbing, shocking and controversial novel, one could not directly see how this story could be transformed into an appealing screenplay and still less into a convincing movie.
Moreover, the story unfolds against the violent background of open racism in a country known for its apartheid.Steve Jacobs did a formidable job in turning the harsh and sometimes bitter and terrible realities into a moving, emotional and ultimately sublime movie, which matches the book.
That's a hard thing to do, and the lead character, a literature professor played by John Malkovich, is the kind of man who analyzes and understands with great nuance almost everything.
The world of South Africa, where whites are bound to gradually lose their place, their land, their well being in a shift back to the original black inhabitants, is not easy to grasp, and the movie, based on J.M. Coetzee's novel, tries.
The story line is that: the father has sexual proclivity for colored young women, and abuses his power to get what he wants; the daughter (who, of course, is white) who lives a secluded life in a sea of blacks, chooses to endure and submit to the humiliation of being raped, robbed, and taken advantage of by her black neighbours, so that she can continue with her way of life in the country; the father, gaining insight into his own past abuse of power through the blacks' abuse of power upon his own daughter, finally repents and becomes genuinely remorseful for his own abuse of power (over young black women).
In other words, he has finally realized how "disgraceful" his past conduct used to be.So, it is an allegory of the nation of South Africa itself: father is the old Apartheid-South Africa, abusing, humiliating and taking advantage of black people; daughter is the whites in the 'new' South Africa with blacks in power, abusing, humiliating and taking advantage of the cowered whites in their turn.
Just as Lucy has voluntarily become Petrus' tenant on her own land, South African whites, by handing the power over to the blacks, become blacks' tenants in their own land.
Simbolically, across Lucy's house Petrus has built a brand new house, as if telling Lucy that this land is now my land.The thing is, the movie is improbable and rather far-fetched in one crucial aspect: why the victims are going to so many lengths to submit to the abusers (in both father's and daughter's cases) to such extreme degree.
Perhaps the movie is attempting to allegorize and translate into personal dimension the change that has happened in the relationship between the whites and blacks in South Africa in general.
Being John Malkovich means you can make this sort of fairly unpleasant and often disturbing dark tale into both an actor's piece and a reasonably good movie, from what is a bit of a dog's ear, which I saw on BBC1.Few do contemptible sneering the way that Malkovich can and as in his best roles, he's a suitably complex nasty piece of work, emotionally shallow and morally drowning, we see him fall from what grace he had - and into the disgrace of the title.Set in post Apartheid South Africa, the location is unusual as are the economic and political set-ups, creating an intriguing if beguiling premise.
It's based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by J M Coetzee and ably directed by Steve Jacobs, of which this is his second only feature.After the suicide of the young female mixed-race student, who had had a sexual relationship with white university lecturer David Lurie (Malkovich), the English professor is sacked.
Both willing to fit in and help to protect his own interests Lurie tries to accept both his fate and the set-up he has to tolerate, while the ever presence of black odd-job worker Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney) both irritates and underscores the whole black/white power struggle that resonates throughout the film.Just as the film settles, some very nasty things happen and these are, frankly, unpleasant and difficult to sit through, with no restraints on graphic details.
All done by black youths, seemingly on a whim.Get past these though and the you will be rewarded; not in a film of great triumph and people changed and redeemed, riding off into the sunset but a slow realisation that life is just that and one has to admit personal shortfalls and to live with that.
Ballad Of A Thin Man. DISGRACE is the kind of movie that tackles so many "Big Issues"-- Colonialism, South Africa's History of Apartheid, Sexual Roles, and even, Animal Rights--that it seems almost destined to fail, yet Steve Jacobs's film is a resounding success.
The film charts the moral and psychological journey of a Cape Town professor, Dr. David Lurie, who is banished from his university position because of an illicit affair with a student, and takes refuge at his daughter's remote farm in Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Jessica Haines plays Professor Lurie's daughter, and admirably manages to convey the pain, anguish, and psychic damage of the aftermath of rape.
I haven't read the award-winning book on which it is based, but Steve Jacob's film 'Disgrace' is a thoughtful and intelligent story about wrongdoing and reconciliation that quite explicitly functions as a microcosm of post-Apartheid South Africa and its relationship with its own past.
In it, John Malkovich's disgraced, womanising and cynical ex-University professor comes to understand the value of offering contrition (when reparation is not obviously a feasible outcome) after his daughter is attacked and there is nothing corresponding to justice available for her.
The fact that both the professor and his daughter are, in their own ways, prickly and proud characters, makes the story more interesting; and the temptation for melodrama is resisted at every turn (indeed, while the most obviously dramatic scenes are being played out, the bigger event is occurring off-camera).
It puts the older well-intentioned but unctuous films about South Africa – like the adaptations of "Cry the Beloved Country" – to shame for their naiveté."Disgrace" is a story with a hard parable: wolves eat dogs.
In spite of the fact that in the film's DVD "bonus" section there so much talk about being "forward looking" and positive; far more than these feel-good qualities is the story's demand for survival, the need to adapt to the environment (regardless of its warmth or gentle, amiable qualities).On one level "Disgrace" is "Ryan's Daughter" without romance but a hell of a feeling.
In opposition & complement is the brilliant black actor Eriq Ebouaney, the power of whose character grows on you like a root of meaning taking hold.
So when he disgraces himself with his totally unprofessional behavior, he finds himself in the South African countryside, in the middle of racial tension following the end of apartheid.
What is happening is an uneasy meeting of the two cultures as David (played by Malkovich) moves in with his daughter and stumbles around in his arrogant stupor, causing her no end of pain.
If those people truly have those values in their culture - intense acid rain and out of control rhinos is the best answer.A sickening waste of time.Okay the sociopath professor was moderately interesting and the repentance to the family was alright.But really, just grind up those South African gang banger rapists in a meat grinder.I am a fool for watching that piece of shi* movie.Malkovich: You let me down.Uuugg..
A Cape Town professor has an affair with a student.Starring John Malkovich and Jessica Haines.Written by J.M Koetzee (Novel) and Screenplay by Anna Maria Monticelli.Directed by Steve Jacobs.This is dark and quirky and left of centre, pretty much how I like my movies.It's basically about desire and how it can often lead to devastating results.
I really liked the location filming and it made a nice change to watch something set in South Africa.
Besides, here, as his daughter Lucy, the South African newcomer Jessica Haines is equally important and very good, less flawed by casting incongruities than Malkovich.
And as Coetzee's comment has acknowledged, the most important thing to the adaptation is how the film can convey the beauty of the South African landscape better than his book did.What's most disturbing to people about the novel is this: it conveys ideas through the protagonist David Lurie (Malkovich's role) about how South Africa has been trashed, how the blacks hate the whites, how the country is a place of anarchy and violence, that are clearly Coetzee's own views.
All one can say is that this is a book that works well as a film and that adapts successfully without a lot of changes.David Lurie has had several wives but he "wasn't made for marriage." A womanizer, a sensualist, at 52 he's losing his physical attraction; he's looking old.
Although the production team is Australian, filming was mainly on location (on a shoestring $6 million) in South Africa.The story of a professor's ill-judged affair with a student and his fall from grace is a pretty common one, a recent example being Philip Roth's novel "Elegy" filmed with Ben Kingsley as the professor.
In the new South Africa power has moved into the hands of the black majority, and white people are there on sufferance only, as Lucy has realised.
Yet somehow he comes to accept his humiliation.John Malkovich's performance as Lurie is what you would expect – an arrogant, hissing snake of a man.
Jessica Haines as his daughter Lucy does – a wonderfully judged and utterly realistic piece of acting.What the film does give us, which the book cannot, is the magnificence of the setting, and the film makers have done very well in this regard, though they have used locations in the Western Cape rather than the East.
This movie examines people's reactions to injustices and to life itself.David is an English Lit professor, who has long since accepted his sexual desires as being part of his nature, being comfortable to make use of prostitutes, accepting that he was not "made for marriage".
Prostrating himself before Melanie's mother was excessive but admirable.David's relationship with, and support of his daughter Lucy also makes for an interesting story.
Doggedly insisting that things must move on, that everything will be all right, that the time will come.This movie asks you: how do you handle the injustices of life?
When the whole campus learns of the event, the unapologetic professor resigns and visits his daughter's house in the middle of nowhere in rural Africa.The life of the professor and her daughter are forever changed after they are brutally attacked in their home by three African teenagers.The script adapted from Coetzee's novel is plain wonderful, as each character not only is part of a dramatic story but also actors of a wider drama, that of South Africa.
Eriq Ebouaney was quite good, Jessica Haines as well.I had watched this movie during Istanbul Film Festival and had the opportunity to attend a question and answer session by Malkovich.
The only reason this movie gets a 3 is that the actors did a reasonable job with a completely unidentifiable storyline.The movie starts off setting a scene with a professor that has completely selfish motives and that karma seems to come back to bite him.But the bad decisions of both Malkovich's character and his daughter make.
And here it is, believe it or not: white South Africans should accept a daughter being raped, her father being set on fire, and innocent dogs being slaughtered...all in the name of making up for apartheid!
"Disgrace" was a much better book, I think, well-plotted, well thought out, and with well-drawn characters.
It's a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall the professor's affair consuming perhaps the first third of the book, his arrival at the Cape and immersion into his daughter's life perhaps another third, then comes the attack and its consequences.
Lucy spends a lot of time lying down and staring off into space, while David does some wandering about, some work at the clinic, passes the odd cryptic remark to Petrus, and makes some very sexless love to Bev.The book, and the film, make some cogent and brave comments upon the state of South Africa, and the film, to be fair, tries to convey those points.
the book and this movie was a disgrace and a waste of malkovich's talents.
The problem in adapting it for the screen is that it's largely an allegory of post-apartheid South Africa and of white responses to it.
Accordingly, whites need to accept that and the desire for revenge that comes with.Neither character is attractive in the novel, and neither point of view is optimistic.
Many who've seen the film but not read the book are seemingly left bemused about why a rape victim passively accepts her situation, or why a tenured professor doesn't try to save his career.
This white man living Cape Town, in the South Africa of the post apartheid era, is living in a rarefied world for he does not see the realities of a country in which things have changed forever.
It's a rather laminous story of a self-indulgent professor in South Africa who learns that there's more to life than the hedonic treadmill.
She also takes care of the stray dogs who overflow the local shelter.While Ebouaney is gone off to seek a wife, Malkovich and Haines are viciously attacked by a trio of young black kids.
Ebouaney is still smiling but turns back to his work without an answer.But, as time passes, Malkovich thinks things over.
BUT the film script is a disgrace.What was the purpose of the needless animal killing ?.There was not one single performance, except maybe for the dogs that was halfway decent.It had nice scenery,filmed in South Africa, The interiors however were filmed in Australia.Normally I like Australian movies, BUT not this,it is a DISGRACERatings: * (out of 4) 25 points (out of 100) IMDb 1 (out of 4).
David Lurie(John Malkovich)is a sex driven Cape Town college professor thinking his tenure allows him to be impervious of rules between teachers and their students.
A clandestine affair with one of his students becomes common knowledge of the campus and Lurie foolhardily retreats to the deep South African brush land where his daughter Lucy(Jessica Haines)lives on a remote farm.
Then in this country struggling with its own tragedy filled history and consequences of social apartheid...Lurie and his daughter are brutally attacked by three black youths; Lucy is raped and David is beaten and set on fire.
While John Malkovich gives a terrific performance as the dismissed professor, who had a relationship with a student in his romantic poetry class, the film should have stayed with that subject matter.
John Malkovitch gives an amazing performance as a charismatic university professor with massive issues about his white male identity living in South Africa, his intellectual power as an academic and his sexual drive.
This character is amazingly complex and I found it fascinating how the film unravels his personality and reveals a deeper side to why he acts the way he does given that he is White South African which carries a burden as well as a privilege.