J A Y R A N T S

Disgrace is based on J.M. Coetzee's prize winning novel. Disgrace is a confronting and brutal tale of our lives... to be specific to the movie, the South African Post Apartheid life. The message is clear. There are no simple solutions!

David Lurie has had several wives but he "wasn't made for marriage." A womanizer, a sensualist, at 52 he's losing his physical attraction; he's looking old. Even his Malay prostitute lets him go. He forces himself upon Melanie Isaacs (Antoinette Engel), a mixed-race student in his romantic poetry class. When they have sex, she turns away as if repelled, but she submits. He's found out and threatened by Melanie's boyfriend, yelled at by her father, boycotted by the students, and at an administrative hearing he's so unrepentent he ends by being forced to leave the college. He goes to the Eastern Cape where his lesbian daughter Lucy has recently been abandoned by her lover. She grows flowers and vegetables she sells in the local market, and she arranges for David to help Bev (Fiona Press), a middle-aged lady whose animal shelter work consists primarily of euthanizing unwanted dogs. In and out of the property he now shares with Lucy is Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney), an almost mythically neutral, philosophical black man who owns land there and is gradually taking over, but who also made Lucy's garden land arable.

Then enters the outside horror. Three young black men appear when Lucy and David are returning from a walk and ask to use her phone. They invade the house, rape Lucy, nearly kill David, and shoot all Lucy's dogs, wrecking the interior of the house and stealing David's car. One pours a bottle of methyl spirits over David and sets fire to him, locking him in the bathroom.

This sequence, I guess ,should be more powerful than the book. After his arrogance, to see Malkovich cowering beside a toilet bowl with his face burned is unforgettable. Eventually he returns to Cape Town and cowers before Melanie's family, asking forgiveness. It's not quite believed, but it's as much of a transformation as such a man is capable of. But it's Lucy's response that's more important: she refuses to report the crime, and refuses to leave. She cooperates with Petrus, who defends the youngest perpetrator. He turns out to be family, the son of his new wife's sister. He says it's over. Reconciliation. In fact, the attack may not have been so random.

David says it'll never be over and will be passed on to those who come long after them. This may be an endgame. But they were born here and they remain. The important thing is that Lucy stays, and so does David, after returning to Cape Town to apologize -- and be serviced by a prostitute.

How scary could middle age be? I guess no one is spared that fear, the one of being left behind in a mindless race that is heading nowhere.

“Although I can never seem to understand,
Within these unoccupied moments are the curses of indecisiveness
Which devour upon this good man, my potential and intellect, if there’s any,
Until I'm left ushered to the hands of fate entirely,
Devoid of a spirit or ability anymore –
A lethargy that takes the better part of me,
Leaving me in a state of refractoriness and a loner
So terrible that it completely devours me, within these confines of seclusion”

- Jay

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my SOUL.

The roads are remarkably bad now. They are more like multi-lane dirt paths that people drive ridiculously fast on until their cars break (which they do often). There are no signs! So I stop every day to ask if I am on the right path. Given how remarkably bad the road is, I guess it should not be a surprise.

There are very few bridges, so I drive through streams and small rivers a lot. The surprising thing is I’ve traveled like this for many a days now!

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