Saturday Night at the Palace

The South African representative at the recent Seattle International Film Festival was a film called Saturday Night at the Palace, and, appropriately, the subject of the movie is apartheid. Instead of a broad statement, the film delivers a small, specific situation, the better to demonstrate horror.

The results are mixed. The film is based on a stage play, and to a large extent it remains innately theatrical. There are some opening expository scenes, but the bulk of the movie is set at a drive-in diner in Johannesburg, just after closing time in the middle of the night. The manager of the place, a black man, is stalled by two late arrivals: a belligerent, over-the-hill soccer player, and his doughy pal, both white.

The soccer player begins by demanding service and ends by channeling his racist fury into physical destruction of the place. The other white man, presumably standing in for the white majority in South Africa, is aloof and confused, sympathetic to the black man but hesitant about doing anything to change the situation.

The characters are representational and symbolic, a method that tends to work better in one-act plays than in movies. There isn’t a lot in the script that allows these characters to be deeper than political billboards, so the actors must work to turn them into human beings.

To a degree, they succeed. In particular, John Kani, as the drive-in manager, is dignified and intelligent as he keeps the lid on his anger until he’s pushed too far. Paul Slabolepszy is the mean-spirited soccer player; he manages to instill some sense of pathetic human frustration that suggests reasons for his rage. Bill Flynn is less successful as the onlooker.

Slabolepszy also wrote the original play. He and Flynn adapted the screenplay. The director, Robert Davies, handles the rising action with a sure hand, and makes the all-encompassing night into an oppressive capsule for this microcosmic story.

First published in The Herald, June 17, 1988

No recollection of this film, but John Kani, already a Tony-winning actor at this point, has had a healthy career. In recent years he’s taken his spot in gargantuan cinematic universes, including Black Panther and voicing a character in the Lion King remake.