JM Coetzee's powerful novel Disgrace, a look at race, class, sex and power in a post-apartheid South Africa, earned its author a Booker Prize, and now the filmed adaptation, which has similarly won plaudits from critics everywhere is set to arrive on DVD on February courtesy of ICA.
Featuring a tour de force performance from the hugely versatile John Malkovich – starring here as a South African professor who seeks solace in the country's wide open spaces after a dalliance too far in the city – Disgrace is both powerful and beautiful and offers up one of the few views of South Africa after the fall of its wicked, divisive regime. Malkovich is outstanding as David Lurie, a Cape Town poetry professor who has an affair with a student and ends up being forced out of his post for abusing his position of trust. Seeking to escape from the city, he visits his daughter on a remote farm, only for the pair to be subjected to a horrific attack that leaves them physically and mentally scarred.
While his daughter is prepared to forgive their assailants and move on, Lurie can't accept their violence. But how different is their attack from his moral bankruptcy? Soon he is forced to face up not only to the consequences of their attack, but also his own wrongdoings.
Disgrace will be released on UK DVD on 8th February 2010 from ICA at the RRP of £12.99. No extras have been listed. |