Mandela

I just got home from seeing the film and goddamit I'm still in tears and I don't even really know why. It wasn't over sentimental, it didn't try and make him some sort of unrealistic glorified hero, it treated Winnie Mandela with a lot of sympathy and even a kind of tenderness, even while showing quite clearly the results of her anger and the violence she helped along.

Maybe it was because I remember so much of this - I remember those school kids getting massacred (I was at school myself at the time which made it resonate even more), I remember boycotting South African food, singing Free Nelson Mandela, crying when they released him. I don't know. It did feel a bit strange and somehow a bit wrong to be watching a film about something that touched my life, however remotely. Stupid for a middle class white girl to feel involved in a black vs white struggle hundreds of miles away, but that was where Mandela's power lay - in making the whole world want to get involved.

It probably wasn't even a great film but fuck it. Idris Elba totally made me forget he wasn't really Nelson Mandela, and now I think I'm extra sad because the real person is dead and I know this will sound really stupid, but I miss him. Where are the world leaders with that kind of integrity but who are willing to put on a rugby shirt and dance when their team wins the World Cup?

I'm going away now to try and get a grip.