I decided to read the novel Moffie first and I liked to read it: an intense description of the apartheid's redneck mentality contrasted with the lives of a band of boys in the army who recognize eachother search for what is really worth in life passed the restricting culture of their white upbringing of the apartheid era. The novel is full of traumatic events and menacing figures in the youth and the army which are very testing for the sanity of the main figure because of his great sensitivity and vulnerability.
The movie curtails the novel in a desastreus way. The youth events are all gone and replaced by one which is ok but far from being so good as the originals. The difficult and central relationship with the father is almost completely gone. The band of boys in the army is reduced from four to three and the homosexuality is brought back to a few suggestions. The erotic tension is often there like in the many shower scenes with all well build young men but in the relationships it is never acted out. In the novel this is also most of the time hidden by the main person but there he thinks about his desires a lot. In general in a movie mental situations, thinking etc are difficult pictured and only heard in a voice over in what ever form. I don't say a voice over should have been used to express all that thinking and feeling from the novel but at least all the tension of the hidden feelings for each other could have been more expressed in what ever cinematographic way. At least it could have been to the open like in the end of the book.
Review of Moffie
