Disgrace Film

[Skye Severy]

Disgraceis a 2008 Australian film,[1] based on J. M. Coetzee's 1999 novel of the same name. It was adapted for the screen by Anna Maria Monticelli and directed by her husband Steve Jacobs.[2] Starring American actor John Malkovich and South African newcomer Jessica Haines,[3] it tells the story of a South African university professor in the post-apartheid era who moves to his daughter's Eastern Cape farm when his affair with a student costs him his position. The film received generally positive reviews.

David Lurie (John Malkovich) is an ageing white professor teaching Romantic literature at an unnamed university in Cape Town shortly after the end of apartheid. David has an affair with one of his students, Melanie Isaacs (Antoinette Engel). University officials learn of the incident and bring David before a disciplinary board. David's colleagues offer him a quiet exit to save face, but he brashly affirms his guilt and refuses to admit wrongdoing, forcing the board to punish him more harshly.

David takes refuge with his daughter, Lucy (Jessica Haines), who owns a farm in the Eastern Cape. At first, the two experience harmony and Lurie finds peace with himself, though he grows suspicious of Lucy's farm manager, Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney). One day, David and Lucy are attacked by three men, who rape Lucy. David goes through a crisis, not knowing how to cope with his personal and family tragedies. He is also confused by the newfound guilt he suddenly feels about these rapes. In a movement toward penance, David goes back to his former student's home to beg for forgiveness from her and her family.

After a brief sojourn in Cape Town, he returns to the farm to find that Lucy is pregnant and that Petrus is steadily increasing his control over the property. One of the rapists has taken up residence with Petrus, and turns out to be his brother-in-law. Despite David's outrage, Lucy insists on not taking the matter to the authorities, and states that she will bear the child. Petrus offers to "marry" her and she agrees in order to come under his protection. David must come to terms with the new South Africa.

It received generally positive reviews in the media. For example, The Washington Post concluded that "Like the novel, the film goes where it must, not where the dictates of off-the-rack narrative compel it. Jacobs has made some smart choices, including tucking the novel's last scene into the body of the film, lessening its inevitable bathos if taken straight from page to screen. The anguishing confrontations between David and Lucy, David and the family of the woman he has wronged, David and Lucy's neighbors, and ultimately, between David and the reality of a modern South Africa, are as powerful here as in the book."[6]

The film has an 83% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 60 votes. The critical consensus states that "Featuring outstanding performances from John Malkovich and newcomer Jessica Haines, Disgrace is a disturbing, powerful drama." The film holds an average score of 71/100 at Metacritic.[7][8] It grossed $1,166,294 at the box office in Australia,[9] and $2,122,574 worldwide.[10]

I awaited the closing scenes of "Disgrace" with a special urgency, because the story had gripped me deeply but left me with no idea how it would end. None -- and I really cared. This is such a rare movie. Its characters are uncompromisingly themselves, flawed, stubborn, vulnerable. We feel we know them pretty well, but then they face a situation of such pain and moral ambiguity that they're forced to make impossible decisions. It's easy to ask them to do the right thing. But what is the right thing?

David Lurie (John Malkovich) teaches the Romantic poets at the University of Cape Town. He lingers over Wordsworth's word choices before a classroom of distracted students. One seems to care: Melanie (Antoinette Engel). He offers her a ride home in the rain. She accepts. (I spent a year in that university on the slopes of Table Mountain. When someone offers you a ride home in the rain, you accept.)

This is South Africa in the years soon after the fall of apartheid. Sexual contact between the races is no longer forbidden by law, and indeed "Disgrace" opens with a liaison between David and a black prostitute. Melanie is Indian. David is white, at least 35 years older, very confident, sardonic, determined. They have sex. We don't see exactly how they get to that point, but it is clear afterward that Melanie is very unhappy. It was probably not literal rape, we're thinking, but it was a psychological assault.

David should be content with his conquest, but he's a cocky and deeply selfish man, and Malkovich, in one of his best performances, shows him acting entirely on his desires. There's a scene where he faces a university disciplinary board; the board obviously hopes to avoid scandal and offers him a graceful exit. He cheekily tells them he is guilty, accepts blame, requests punishment.

Now the divorced David goes to visit his daughter Lucy (Jessica Haines), a lesbian who owns a remote farm and supports herself with a market garden and dog breeding. Her farm manager is an African named Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney, who played the lead in "Lumumba"). This man is more independent than years in South Africa have led David to expect. He doesn't believe Lucy is safe living on the farm with him.

Now events take place I will not describe, except to say that Lucy is indeed not safe, and that David becomes locked in essentially a territorial dispute with Petrus. This dispute has a background in the old and new South Africas, strong racial feelings, and difficult moral choices. The nature of the personalities of David, Lucy and Petrus are deeply tested.

The film is based on a novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, which won the Booker Prize. I read it in 1999, remembered it well, but not the details of the ending. Now I understand why. It isn't so much about what happens, as about the way things are. The final shot by the director Steve Jacobs is in its own way perfect. There cannot be a resolution, apart from the acceptance of reality.

I imagine those seeing "Disgrace" will find themselves in complex discussions about right and wrong. In any sense, what David did with Melanie was wrong, and what happens later to Lucy is wrong. We agree. But whose response is better? David's or Lucy's? To ask that question is the whole purpose of this story. There are two more questions: What does it mean when David decides to put down a dog he feels affection for, and what has happened within him by the time of the final scene? As the last shot begins, you will be asking yourself. The shot will not make it easy for you. I know what I think, but it isn't a comfortable conclusion.

This is one of the year's best films. Before discussing Malkovich, I want to mention four other performances. Fiona Press as Bev, a warm, comfortable middle-aged woman who runs the animal shelter in town, is a necessary center of comfort and calm. Jessica Haines plays Lucy with unbending, clear-eyed conviction. Ebouaney has a crucial role and plays it wisely, not signaling what we should think of him but simply playing a man who is sure of his ground. Antoinette Engel has a smaller role, also crucial, with perfect pitch: She, too, doesn't parade her feelings. After the film is over, it may occur to you that Melanie and Lucy have undergone similar experiences.

Then there is Malkovich, an actor who is so particular in the details of voice and action. After you see "Disgrace," you may conclude no other actor could possibly have been cast for the role. He begins as a cold, arrogant, angry man, accustomed to buying his way with his money and intelligence. He is also accustomed to being a white man in South Africa. In no sense does David think of himself as a racist and probably always voted against apartheid. But at least it was always there for him to vote against. Now he undergoes experiences that introduce him to an emerging new South Africa -- and no, I don't mean he undergoes conversion and enlightenment. This isn't a feel-good parable. I simply mean he understands that something fundamental has shifted, and that is the way things are.

The book, which won the Booker Prize in 1999, is a bleak depiction of post-apartheid South Africa. In the movie, Malkovich stars as David Lurie, a professor who loses his position in disgrace after an affair with a student goes sour.

Well, in "disgrace," anyway. As Malkovich tells Renee Montagne, "Clearly [Lurie] rejects not just the politically correct mores about [his offense]; he really rejects the notion, it seems to me, that he did anything wrong." Malkovich says Coetzee offers one clue about why in his choice of a career for the professor: Until his downfall, Lurie teaches Romantic poetry.

Even in that hopeful new climate, however, rural South Africa can be a dangerous place. And yet Lurie finds his openhearted daughter living defiantly, refusing to live behind high walls or keep a gun for protection as many of her compatriots do. Lucy's choices don't sit easy with her father, who isn't nearly as optimistic as she chooses to be.

David, too, finds something to carry into the future: He learns what Malkovich chooses to think of as "acceptance." And as the movie ends, the camera pulls back on a vision of the universe Malkovich's character has come to accept: a tidy farmhouse, vulnerable and very small, in the vast, wild landscape of South Africa.

The film follows the story of Cassie Webb, played by Dakota Johnson, who is a paramedic in New York City. After a near-death experience, Cassie discovers she has the ability to see into the future. The remainder of the plot focuses on her using her powers to save three teenage girls from the villain, Ezekiel Sims. Right off the bat, the storyline has a lot of potential, all of which is wasted.

In many ways the film demonstrates an interesting aspect of a family dynamic. The family unit is so encompassing it creates a world unto itself almost impenetrable from the outside world. What happens inside a home, however dark, remains private. Within the sanctity of a home, the seclusion of the family remains intact. Nothing else seems to exist or matter. But when this microcosm steps outside of its boundaries, it enters into an entirely different realm with additional rules and consequences beyond control. Disgrace leaves us with the uncomfortable feeling that the escalated type of conversation had between Milo and his father will not be the last of its kind, and them crossing the physical boundary and bringing their private world into the public world only signifies a saddening and impending doom for their family.

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