Shaka Zulu (1986)

How sad is this?

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

As someone who is very interested in the Zulu nation and having read many books on this subject particularly The Washing of Spears by Donald R Morris- I was looking forward to watching the DVD box set. I had caught odd episode repeats on TV and wanted to view it properly. However, I was disappointed with it. The editing was appalling. SCenes suddenly ended as the screen went black and new scenes started without any natural chronology - I assume to fit in adverts on TV. Whole scenes of the tribal episodes had the use of the Zulu language without subtitles so there was no explanation of what was happening. Additionally, some of the local actors used had such thick accents they needed subtitles when speaking English and some of the acting was very stilted and wooden. Also the battle scenes although they had a cast of thousands looked artificial. Warriors were dying all over the place with a bit of tomato sauce and no real injury. Shaka saves a warrior who has a spear in his back, when he meets him later there is no scar. The fighting had no real explanation about who hey were fighting. One minute he is taken in by someone, then he is with someone else. The scenes with the usual stockpot of English actors who always turn in a decent performance were good as one would expect. I particularly liked Edward Fox who dropped his Edward 8th mannerisms for a change. Henry Cele looked majestic as Shaka so was well cast, but the scenes in his younger years were awful. Dudu Mkhize as Nandi, SHaka's mother gave the best performance in the whole series. It seemed neither a film nor a documentary but as it was apparently made in South Africa before the end of Apartheid at least it let the magnificent Zulus relive their history

Although the first few episodes on the first disc were slow as molasses, I liked the middle disks. It was an interesting view into what life was like for Africans in that part of the world around 1800. The hypocrisy of the British and Dutch made me want to puke. (For instance, traveling over 6,000 miles to another continent to defeat the "savages" who were threatening the European way of life.) Even though the movie focused on African royalty and warrior culture, it would be interesting to see this time period from other points of view, like women or children. The movie covered a range of human stories: love, betrayal, jealousy, military, politics, culture, religion and triumph. There was even a good villainess. The movie tone could have been tongue in cheek or slapstick, but instead Shaka Zulu was treated with dignity, regardless of what side of history you are on. Makes you realize what a joke most movies are that supposedly show Africans before they adopted Western culture. The most annoying thing was the too loud, fake African chorus that kept intruding into the movie. It sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle choir.

I think this is, unfortunately, a unique series, showing history at least partially from a Zulu perspective, unlike similar movies like Zulu and Zulu Dawn. These movies show history from the colonialists' side and therefore leave a lot of questions unanswered. What were the political and social dynamics of the creation and rise of the Zulu kingdom? What were social relations and even every day like? This series goes a little way in addressing these topics, only a little, but a lot more than any Western television series or movie before it, which is what makes it unique. It wouldn't be misplaced in any modern (high school) class room. Henry Cele is great as the Zulu king to be, the music is great although basically Western, and the story would put any soap opera to shame. Realism is tops, with all the major African players being South African and it being filmed in South Africa. Where it falls down or slows, is when it goes to the more familiar narrative of the colonials, although Edward Fox is good, as always, as is Robert Powell. The series was of course also very topical, because even though it dealt with a war and struggle 108 years earlier, it was also about a fight for freedom and independence that wasn't won until 13 years ago and that is still in the process of being fulfilled.Recommended.

When Nandi and her unborn child are saved by the ancient witch doctor, he proclaims: "A force has been generated that in time will rock the foundation of the African sub-continent."Indeed the prophecy shaped the event and Shaka was the ruthless founder of southern Africa's Zulu Empire... In less than a decade, the paramount chieftain of the Zulu clan revolutionized the techniques of tribal warfare and fashioned an efficient and terrifying fighting force that devastated the entire region...Set against the emergence of British power in Africa during the early 19th Century, the film provides some valuable insights into comparative cultures...Shaka (Henry Cele) is a man of considerable height, thin, with athletic body and white teeth who can read and write... He is a great warrior, tactically, strategically and physically... He rearms his army with a long-bladed, short-shafted stabbing spear, which forced them to fight at close quarters... He goes for extermination, incorporating the remnants of the clans he smashed into the Zulu, making it increase with numbers and power..The Mini-Series begins with a letter to the British king (George IV) regarding the Zulus' potential threat to the Cape Colony... In an attempt to intimidate Shaka into an alliance with the British empire, the Secretary of War sends a delegation to inner African to meet with the fearful warrior...We see: The meeting of Nandi, an orphaned princess of the neighboring Langeni clan and Senzangakona, the chief of the then small Zulu tribe... They are instantly attracted to each other... Nandi becomes pregnant, at the same time as Kona's wife, but the marriage did not last... Their marriage violated Zulu custom, and the stigma of this extended to the child...The couple separated when Shaka was six, and Nandi takes her son back to the Langeni, where he passed a fatherless boyhood among a people who despised his mother and makes him the butt of endless cruel pranks... He grows up to be bitter and angry, hating his tormentors... The Langeni drove Nandi out, and she finally found shelter with the Dletsheni, a sub-clan of the powerful Mtetwa...Shaka rules with an iron hand from the beginning, distributing instant death for the slightest opposition...While en route to Shaka's capital, the crew's doctor saves a girl who is in a coma and nearly buried alive by her tribe... Impressed by both the deed and their horses, Shaka agrees to meet with the crew... And so begins the clash of two cultures, two different worlds...Shaka, seriously wounded for saving an unknown warrior (King Dingiswayo), is nursed to health by a beautiful Mtwetwa girl...Shaka, believing in total annihilation, joins the Mtwetwa army and creates a dangerous weapon for the African warfare...Shaka grants Port Natal, with its ivory rights, to the British crew after he is saved by the crew's doctor from an assassination attempt...Shaka's mighty army saving the British delegation in a battle against thousands of Ndwandwe warriors... To test the alliance and allegiance of the British delegation, Shaka orders them into battle alone against the Ndwandwe warriors...With his mother's death Shaka becomes openly psychotic... Shaka rules by the sheer force of his personality, building, by scores of daily executions, a fear so profound that he could afford to ignore it... Set against the spectacular panorama of the Zulu tribal homelands, and with graphic violence and frequent nudity, "Shaka Zulu" is a tremendous epic Mini-Series, chronicling the rise and fall of one of the most famous South Africans who has already passed into legend...