Disgrace (2008)

Professor David Lurie: So what kind of creature is this Lucifer?
Melanie's boyfriend: He does what he feels like. Doesn't care if it's good or bad, he just does it.
Prof. Lurie: Exactly. Good or bad, he just does it. He doesn't act on principles but on impulse. And the source of his impulse is dark to him. "His madness was not of the head but heart...". A mad heart. What is a mad heart? Note that we are not asked to condemn this being with a mad heart. On the contrary, we are invited to sympathize. For though he lives among us, he is not one of us. He is what he calls himself, "a thing",   that is, a monster. Not possible to love and condemned to solitude. 

Professor David Lurie (John Malkovich) - 52, divorced, aloof and haughty - lures a vulnerable student, Melanie Issacs (Antoinette Engel), of mixed-race into a physical relationship because he believes, "A woman's beauty doesn't belong to her alone, its part of the bounty she brings into the world". After being caught, he refuses to repent for his actions and pronounces himself guilty of everything he has been accused of, without even caring to read Melanie's statements. After being dismissed from his position and his subsequent fall from grace, he moves to the Eastern Cape to stay with his daughter, Lucy (Jessica Haines). Lucy owns a farm along with co-proprietor, Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney), an African who stays there and helps Lucy at odd jobs.

Although life for Lurie seems to look better after the humiliation he suffers at the university, there's still more to come, as if its God's way of making him accept defeat and repent for his past actions. After letting some black youth into her home in an act of kindness, Lucy gets raped by them in the presence of her father. Lurie is attacked too and locked in the bathroom, almost left to burn to death. Lurie uncomfortably insists on reporting the full crime to the police while Lucy is hesitant because she is the one who has to live there and bear the shame, even though she does a good act of putting up a brave front. Even in the face of defeat, Lurie is stubborn and at no point tries to play the victim and unleashes his own form of violence when he catches one of the black kids spying on his daughter.

This movie is a good depiction of racial tension in post-apartheid South Africa and also speaks about the treatment of women in the hands of men from both the white and the black race. John Malkovich gives an excellent performance in this Steve Jacob's adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's novel of the same name. Jessica Haines does a brilliant job too of being the victim. There are times where it seems to suggest she is able to rationalize her whole ordeal as punishment for her father's acts. I had read the novel a long time back and hardly remember any of the details to make any comparative judgment whether the movie does justice to Coetzee's novel. This ain't a movie for those who are looking only for "entertainment", but for those who love Coetzee's prose, this is a chance to fall in love again with his depiction of human nature which goes beyond the realms of good and evil.

Rating: 7.5/10