{"id":9680,"date":"2020-03-18T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T13:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/?p=9680"},"modified":"2020-03-18T15:00:55","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T13:00:55","slug":"flatland-takes-its-audience-on-a-wild-western-caper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/blog\/2020\/03\/18\/flatland-takes-its-audience-on-a-wild-western-caper\/","title":{"rendered":"Flatland Takes Its Audience On A Wild, Western Caper"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Director Jenna Bass\u2019s feminist subversion of the western genre interrogates contemporary identities and dark secrets as it moves towards a climactic ending.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nicole Fortuin and Izel Bezuidenhout<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Flatland\u2019, the new film by Jenna Bass, opens in cinemas on 10 April. The unique, contemporary drama is a tale about self-discovery for three different but equally trapped women \u2013 a pregnant teenager, a young bride, and a middle-aged cop \u2013 played out against the backdrop of the Karoo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With its darkly comic Western flavour, \u2018Flatlands\u2019 take the viewer on a journey through the surreal Badlands of the Great Karoo, wide open skies and vast plains, the land so flat, \u201cyou can see your future rolling in.\u201d It\u2019s a land that has been fought over, vilified and torched for centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film opens with a wedding ceremony in a church between skittish, virginal bride Natalie Jonkers (Nicole Fortuin) and her policeman groom, Bakkies Bezuindenhout (De Klerk Oelofse) in the boondocks of Beaufort West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What follows is an odyssey. Grieving her dead mother, Natalie flees her new husband, seeking the comfort from her horse, and armed with her husband\u2019s firearm for self-defence. She ends up on the run, Thelma and Louise style, with heavily pregnant childhood friend Poppie Van Niekerk (Izel Bezuidenhout).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a night of binge drinking, they plan to flee to Johannesburg, the city filled with gold and opportunity. Questioning issues of race, class and gender, \u2018Flatland\u2019 is a portrait of femininity set against the backdrop of a hostile frontier land, that interrogates what it means to be a woman today \u2013 in South Africa and the world at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bass introduces the audience to marginal communities on the fringes of the social group, which further add to the dislocation and fragmented sense of identity throughout the film. In the traditional Hollywood Western, male cowboys on the frontier forge ahead into the wild west. Bass\u2019s vision offers us the \u2018post-western, the conquered, colonised land reverting back to lawlessness\u2019, and in the place of cowboys, she offers a menagerie of cowgirls, convicts who moan that they don\u2019t belong and a young police officer who hides behind his retired father in a shoot-out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Flatland\u2019 is the third feature from writer-director Bass \u2014 who also co-wrote the Kenyan Cannes headline-grabber \u2018Rafiki\u2019. \u201cI have long wanted to make a western set in the Karoo,\u201d says Bass. \u201cI love the drama, action and locations of the traditional western. The unwritten rule of westerns is, however, that they are for men and by men. \u2018Flatland\u2019 is the opposite \u2013 it\u2019s a feminist post-western in which the women reject the conformities of a heteronormative life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach woman is raw and authentic in her own way,\u201d Bass says. \u201cIn making the film, we deferred to each of the actresses and encouraged them to \u2018own\u2019 their characters. The story interrogates life in communities that exist on the margins, where there is a sense of the land returning to lawlessness, which is what made Beaufort West an ideal setting. It became its own character. The film looks at complex questions and injustices, offering no solid conclusions or happily ever-afters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combined with composer Bao-Tran Tran\u2019s pulsating electronic beats, the film\u2019s composition supports the feminist subversion of the western genre and floats the spectator towards a climactic ending. Shot by\u202finternational cinematographer Sarah Cunningham, \u2018Flatland\u2019 takes the audience into South Africa\u2019s dry interior region, emphasising dusty roads, distant mountains and endless sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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