In 1968, a young man whose family is allowed to run a laundry in a white part of South Africa is torn between going into the family business and becoming a musician.
This is a good domestic drama with heavy social issue over tones. It's a film that shows us what it was like under apartheid just as the world was really beginning to notice the injustice taking place.
The trouble with the film is that outside of being set in South Africa, this is a story we've seen any number of times before. All of the threads from the coming-of-age tale, fighting with the parents over direction and the social justice angle have all been done before in some form or combination. Once all the pieces are set up in the first few minutes, we can largely tell how this is going to play out. I was never fully engaged because I knew how this would play out.
While the film is very good on it's own terms, the fact that it hits too many of the expected points make this seem less than it really is.
Worth a look.
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