Idris Elba (TV’s The Wire, Luther) gives a charismatic central performance in this long-awaited biopic of the heroic, internationally adored anti-apartheid revolutionary and former South African president Nelson Mandela.
Basing the action on Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) mounts a sensitive investigation of his early life.
Detailed are Mandela’s childhood in rural South Africa amid the Xhosa, his education and radicalisation into an outspoken young lawyer and his tempestuous romance with controversial second wife Winnie (Naomie Harris; Skyfall) – as well as the now almost legendary events of his arrest, trial and staggering 27-year prison term; his ecstatic, politically cathartic release in 1990 and eventual ascension to ANC President following South Africa’s first multi-racial election in 1994.
Elba offers a commanding, supple turn in a film that spans an entire life; energetic and impassioned as the younger man fighting oppression, he visibly gains in gravitas as the more conciliatory elder statesman whose self-sacrifice united an entire nation, and in his scenes with Naomie Harris as Winnie, evinces a touching chemistry that sits at the emotional heart of the film.
Shot with conviction and grandeur, but with an emphasis on realism over sentiment, the astonishing facts of Mandela’s life make this a compelling watch.
