'Master Harold'... and the Boys

The original film version of Athol Fugard's play is very powerful and moving. It deals with institutional racism in the early 1950's South Africa and how it affects two black men and one white teenager. Matthew Broderick and the late Zakes Mokae give great performances.

I found this on YouTube recently, and it reminded me of the time many years ago when I saw this on television. I was a young man (25) at the time, and it just tore me up. I would like to think that I was already a non-racist, but I know that this movie grounded and solidified my opinions and feeling on the topic like nothing else ever has.

It sneaks up on you. Three people talking in room about ballroom dancing, geography, history, and kite flying. You don't see it coming, but it gradually becomes one of the most profound statements on how racism hurts everyone, including (and maybe especially) the racist himself.

Nothing before or since in my life has effected me in precisely the way this did, and does. The acting is superb, and the writing.... well, Atholl Fugard is a genius.

See this version. I assume the Ving Rhames film is also good, but it has a much larger cast and so I suspect they added a lot of new material to "open it up" as Hollywood likes to do. I'll see it, but you must see this version first. Also, Zakes Mokae won a Tony award for this portrayal of Sam, and it is so obvious as to why. His final soliloquy to Hally made me cry. Then, and now.

There are no special effects, elaborate sets, or huge casts of megastars. There are only three cast members, one set, and a script. The script is so well written, and the acting so good, that this movie is outstanding despite of, or perhaps, because of, the limited resources. It is good old-fashioned story-telling, with nothing to distract.

I watched this movie once as a young boy, and it absolutely destroyed me.

I'm not sure how old I was, but I was just old enough to be home alone when my parents went out for the night. It may have been the first time I was left home alone, as a matter of fact.

Not sure how I ended up watching this movie - it seems an odd choice for a kid staying up past his bedtime because his parents were out to dinner.

In any event, it moved me in a way no movie had before. I was enraptured by the relationship between Master Harold and his servants, the beautiful fatherly care he was shown, and the deep love that existed between them. When Master Harold grows, and begins to see the separation between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa - when he gets caught up in the evil and intolerance of that horrible time... I was devastated.

I had never cried like I cried at that movie, at the loss of innocence and the purity of the relationship that was so brutally tarnished. I felt like I had lost something myself. I mourned the love that was destroyed… and at the culmination of the film, the realization that a boundary had been crossed, that some words, and some actions can never be undone.

As a young white kid growing up in a sheltered, privileged life, I feared that I might grow to develop that kind of ignorance…in my naiveté I didn't see that I was already being raised to be a good, accepting person and that were I in a place where I could lose that basic humanity, the movie itself would not have had such an impact on me.

In any event, this movie was a formative part of my being, and the adult I have grown up to be. I have a visceral hatred for bigotry and intolerance, and I can say that – of course, along with my parents and their wise guidance – this movie was a significant part of the journey that resulted in this as a guiding principle of who I am as an adult, and how I raise my children.

I have not seen the film again since, and I would be curious to see if the impact would hold true so many years later. But based on my memory of the experience, I couldn't recommend this film more, for children, adults, or anyone who wants a meaningful and powerful look into innocence lost and the damage that can be wrought through ignorance and intolerance.

Athol Fugard wrote a brilliant play about the institutional and personal racism that was South African society. It made its debut at the Yale Repertory Theater back in 1950 and it took over 30 years to get to Broadway.

This is a public television broadcast of said play and it stars African players Zakes Mokae and John Kani as the help in a luncheon establishment in Port Elizabeth. South Africa. The teenage son of the owner is the third character in this 3 person drama and our title character Master Harold played here by Matthew Broderick.

Young Harold is home from school and he's got some father issues. The old man is a drunk and a bully and he's crippled besides. He's a burden on Harold and his mom and the business they have that supports them is her's.

The two servants have been with the family for years. But Mokae makes the mistake of getting too familiar with the kid and he pays.

You can only imagine the shame and humiliation Broderick feels from his peers. But South African society with racism codified into their law tells Broderick there's a whole group that he's superior too who have darker skins. And if that's not enough there's the personal racism in which he was probably built into his own upbringing.

This is an autobiographical work from Fugard and this televised play is perfectly cast and performed. The incessant rain in the background both explains why there are no customers and adds to a gloomy tension that the work has.

Don't miss this if broadcast.