The score was composed by veteran English composer John Barry, who dedicated it to Nelson Mandela. Theophilus MsimanguĪlthough this is a South African film, the majority of the main characters in the movie are played by Westerners, specifically Americans. When Stephen And James meet, they eventually come to unexpected understandings about their sons and their own shared humanity. Simultaneously, the white man's father, James Jarvis (Richard Harris), supports apartheid. There he discovers that his son Absalom has been arrested for the murder of a white man. Set in South Africa in October 1946, before the official implementation of apartheid, this is the story of church minister Stephen Kumalo (James Earl Jones) who is requested from his village to Johannesburg. The film was made in 1995, shortly after the fall of apartheid and the free election of Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. It stars James Earl Jones and Richard Harris. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.Įxamines different aspects of Paton's novel about race relations in South Africa, with a biographical sketch of the author and critical essays on this work.Cry, the Beloved Country is a 1995 South African-American drama film directed by Darrell Roodt, based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. In Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony.'Ĭry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, 'We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad many novels from poets, almost all thin. The most famous and important novel in South Africa's history, and an immediate worldwide bestseller when it was published in 1948, Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law is a work of searing beauty. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.' Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear.

Cry the beloved country author