Review of The Bang Bang Club (2011) by Robert H — 29 Feb 2012

I was about 12 years old when apartheid ended, and, as momentous as that might have been, I was almost entirely oblivious to it all. Heck, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe had been way out on the periphery of my awareness, and a few years later, the Rwandan genocide, too, would somehow happen outside my sphere of awareness.

Basically, while my parents watched the news, I barely paid attention or cared about it.

So watching The Bang Bang Club was a strange experience: I had no idea how much bloodshed had preceded those elections, and how closely. I'd heard of necklacing and the brutality of the struggle in South Africa, and, watching Stander a few years ago (and Red Dust), I knew that there'd been all kinds of horrors, but somehow, I'd always assumed that the worst things all happened in the 60s, or 70s, or maybe so early in the 80s that they sort of preceded my conscious life.

The Bang Bang Club, focusing on just a few years in the early 90s, tells the story of a handful of photographers who aim right for the centre of any conflict, altercation, riot, manhunt, lynching... and whose work shined a light on these events. It's a film about men with a callous, almost pornographic attachment to "bang bang", the violence, the happening of horror. There is politics going on, somewhere faintly in the background, but to these men, the big picture is of little interest: they're after the small picture, the money shot of suffering.

As a movie, it is harrowing, but tense, and compelling to watch. I cannot claim to like any of the characters much (bar perhaps the picture editor), but the film is based on real people and events, and I get the sense that I would not have liked any of the real life individuals, either. Perhaps they are due some admiration for their bravery and their work, but you sort of get the sense that they are not necessarily nice, cheerful, pleasant people.

It was a tense and educational movie, and well worth the DVD rental.