In 1969, a stage play Boesman & Lena indicting South Africa’s apartheid was performed in South Africa; in 1970, off Broadway. A film followed in 1974. Some twenty-five years later Boesman & Lena has been brought to the screen again by director John Berry, who died late last year. Danny Glover stars as Boesman and Angela Bassett as Lena. Now that apartheid has been abolished, the movie seems an odd anachronistic relic for the year 2000. The story is about a “colored” couple (blacks with some white blood) who have been bulldozed from their shantytown homes near Capetown on several occasions, forced to live from the proceeds of recycled bottles, some of which they empty themselves, to the point where they are non-compos mentis. Most of the film takes place along the shoreline of the Swartkops River, where the married couple have found a place to stay for the night. Featuring flashbacks to earlier times in their lives, both happier and more tragic, most of the film consists of a dialog between Boesman and Lena in which the latter bitterly blames the former for the uncertainty of their lives. Boesman, happy to be “free” from the fear that their home will be bulldozed again in the middle of the night, not only refuses to console her but often antagonizes her. Lena, however, overacts and screams hysterically to such an extent that filmviewers will be so annoyed at her bickering that they will understand that Boesman has beaten her in the past. The sudden appearance of a Xhosa tribesman (played by Willie Jonah), who dies in the middle of the night alongside her, adds fuel to the fires raging inside her, and it is easy to lose sympathy for her plight; indeed, she urges Boesman to kill her the next time he tries to beat her in order to end her psychological suffering. Boesman then flees from Lena, fearing that he will be charged with murdering the Khosa, but does not go very far. In contrast with the somber ending of the original play, in the morning Boesman and Lena are reconciled; she takes his hand, and they wander on to their next temporary lodging, consisting again of pieces of scrap metal assembled to make shelter from sudden rainstorms. The production, in short, is not much more than a filmed stage play. MH