The Gods Must Be Crazy

This 1980 South African comedy became a worldwide minor cult classic on its initial release.

Written, produced, directed, filmed and edited by Jamie Uys, it tells the story of Xi, a Kalahari bushman, who goes on a quest to rid his little idyllic community of a strange evil object which has fallen from the sky - a Coca Cola bottle.

The Kalahari Bushmen, the film's narrator tells us in apseudo-scientific style, are a primitive people who have nothing and need nothing. Their lives are a model of beautiful simplicity. Everything is harmony - they do not fight over possessions because they have none. They have no words for hatred or fear and their lives are untouched by the modern world outside of their desert.

Xi must leave his desert homeland to dispose of the strange object the Gods have sent him. And Xi, played by a remarkably talented natural actor named Nixau, finds that life outside his desert is strange and complicated. He kills a herd-animal to eat and winds up in gaol, slowly starving to death. There are strange taboos in this strange land.

Fortunately, he gains unexpected allies, in the shape of research scientist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers) and his handyman offsider Sam Boga (Louw Verwey). They spring him from gaol, and Xi repays the debt by helping save from death or worse the new schoolteacher Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) and her entire class, who've been kidnapped by rebel soldiers.

The movie features some very nice slapstick acting from Marius Weyers as the research scientist who suffers a bad case of the Laurel and Hardies every time he sees a pretty girl. The entire film is pleasant low-key humour from start to finish - gentle humour, with nothing to offend anyone.

Well, nothing until you realise, care of the accompanying special feature, that the entire movie was based on a lie. There was no beautiful unspoiled community of Kalahari bushmen. The narration introducing them and their lives was invention from start to finish. In reality, the South African society had already invaded the desert. The bushmen, apart from a few trotted out to say "hi" to tourists, were marginalised and starving.

It sort of takes the gloss off the movie, to realise that this picture of the idyllic bushmen was in fact just part of the lies which characterised the South African apartheid-based government.

At the same time, it must be confessed that filmmaker Jamie Uys's invention was a fairly innocent deception - he doesn't, in this movie, portray the bushmen, or research scientist Andrew Steyn's black handyman sidekick Sam Boga, as in any way inferior to the white characters. The story is perpetuating a lie but, paradoxically, in a non-racist way.

The main feature is presented in a decent quality anamorphic widescreen presentation. It is not of outstanding quality, but pictorial values never were brilliant in what was a very basic film-making project. It is a very honest representation of a modest movie.

The two-channel soundtrack is not going to set any home system on fire. It's basic in its quality, but totally up to the task of rendering dialogue clearly, right down to the last click of the remarkable Kalarahi Bushmen's language.

The main extra feature is what obviously could be a fascinating documentary, Journey to Nyae Nyae, made by an American filmmaker who visits the Bushmen in 1990 and then returns ten years later to see what changes have been made to their society. And this is where this DVD is crying out to be taken off the market immediately, revamped and put back on sale in a properly corrected version.

It's through this documentary that we discover that when the bushman actor Nixau was selected from his community to play the role Xi, his community was already living in marginalised and degraded conditions, with many of its members on the point of starvation.

Conditions seem to have improved somewhat on succeeding visits, though we're only guessing at that since the main feature of this documentary is a series of long interviews with Nixau, with him speaking in his bushman language. And because most of us don't speak the Bushman click-language, subtitles are provided.

Well, thanks for the thought. But since the subtitle choice is only between French, German, Italian, Dutch and Spanish, it's obvious that this DVD was never, ever, intended for an English-speaking market.

It's unbelievable that such a DVD could go on the market here without someone in the issuing company checking something so fundamental as whether there were English subtitles. It would be even more unbelievable if this had been noted and then ignored.

So the main special feature is rendered useless for most Australian viewers in this so-called 'Special Edition'. And I think that's enough to warrant the disc being retooled and replaced.

The second special feature is a trivial photo gallery of some small-format photographs from the documentary.

Finally, there are three decent-quality non-anamorphic widescreen theatrical trailers, for the Joy Adamson saga Born Free about her lioness cub Elsa and its sequel Living Free, and for a movie unrelated in everything except name, Running Free.

Don't buy or rent. Wait until a replacement DVD is put onto the market specifically tailored to an English-language audience.