Shaka does Shakespeare in The Beast, an excellently staged but very ambiguous, immersive yet enigmatic short film.
South Africa
4*
Directors:
Samantha Nell
Michael Wahrmann
Screenwriters:
Samantha Nell
Michael Wahrmann
Director of Photography:
Nicholas Turvey
Running time: 18 minutes
All the world is a stage, and we are merely watching the other players. Maybe that’s what happens in a comedy. But in a tragedy, we are also (unwitting, perhaps reluctant) players. And anyone who’s familiar with Funny Games will know that it can be frightful for the viewer to realise her implicit involvement in the spectacle.
The Beast is a short film set inside the pheZulu Safari Park, which is a real park in present-day South Africa. Here, tourists can see wildlife, walk around a “cultural village” with indigenous huts and witness traditional Zulu dances. What the (almost uniformly white) visitors find most thrilling, however, is the opportunity to see Shaka, the famous Zulu warrior who never lost a battle. Of course, it’s not the real Shaka, who died nearly 200 years ago. The imposing young man playing him (Khulani Maseko) is an actor who dreams of leaving this life behind and performing in a Shakespeare play at the National Theatre. Or does he?
Writing-directing duo Samantha Nell and Michael Wahrmann make the very clever decision to shoot most of their film in long, unbroken takes, which tends to imply a unity of space and time similar to what we experience in real life. The camera rarely makes itself known. Instead, it lets the action play out in wide shots that allow us to take in the actors and their surroundings. Among others, we get to know the aspirations of “Shaka”, who says he wants more than just to play the Bard’s famous dark-skinned Moor, Othello. Even though everyone we see is dressed up in costumes and moving around inside this Disney-like village, we are led to believe that these are intimate, “real” conversations between the actors.
But then, without warning, the film shatters all our illusions. And no review can do justice to the film without unpacking this multi-layered twist. The performers line up to dance and perform, presumably a traditional Zulu song. Shaka slowly separates from the group and takes up position between them and the audience. When he starts to speak, he speaks in Zulu. But the words that come out of his mouth are those of Shakespeare. More to the point, they belong to Shylock, the Jew, in The Merchant of Venice.
We don’t see the audience for this performance, but it is because we are the audience. As a drum starts to beat offscreen, the drama increases, and Shaka switches to English to deliver the best-known and most aggressive portion of the monologue.
If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you offend us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we shall resemble you in that.
If a Jew offends a Christian, what is his answer? Revenge.
If a Christian offends a Jew, what should his punishment be by Christian example? Revenge.
By this stage, the rest of the group of Zulu performers have joined in, and as they reach the camera, their heads fill the frame. Just like Shaka’s famous bull’s head formation, the viewer is surrounded. Dead centre is Shaka, who now turns to look straight at us before delivering the final blow: “The evil you teach me will be difficult to execute, but in the end, I will better my instructor.”
At long last, we get a reverse shot of the tourists. Their jaws are on the floor. As a destabilisation of the expected boundaries between the spectator and the performers, this staging is very clever. It now seems clear that everything we have been watching – all the “private” conversations we were privy to, all the “behind-the-scenes” activity that we witnessed – was staged for us. We are the tourists visiting the film. Every moment and every action was merely part of a show, and we have not learnt anything about the individuals themselves. Perhaps we should have known better since “Shaka” is always in costume and is never called by any other name.
Unfortunately, those final words, which seem to create fear and provoke total confusion among the tourists clutching their phones like a security blanket, are too disconnected from the story to get a clear sense of what the actor is talking about. We can kind of grasp the metaphor of a struggle for equality. Jew–Christian can be replaced by black–white or indigenous–coloniser, but is this “evil” in the final line? Is the film really implying the possibility of another apartheid – one in reverse, in which blacks will dominate and enslave the whites? Is this merely a historical reminder that Shaka’s tribe, the Zulus, would ultimately take back power over this land? Or does it dovetail with Shaka’s desire to play “deep, ambiguous” characters?
With its series of impressively staged single takes and a powerful but puzzling ending, The Beast certainly stands out from the pack. The four scenes don’t fit neatly together, but with a powerhouse performance by lead actor Khulani Maseko, it almost doesn’t matter. This is Shaka’s show, and he hits the bull’s eye.