A World Apart Essay, Research Paper

A world Apart is a film by Chris Menges ( 1988 ). The actress ( Diana Roth in the film ) won the price for best actress.

The story takes place in 1963 in the residential suburbs of Johanesburg while apartheid was practiced. The apartheid consists in separating whites from blacks in public areas like schools, bus The main characters are Diana and her daughter Molly. Diana is a journalist and she is a white militant for the blacks cause, she s active in the ANC ( Africa National Congress ).

Diana gets arrested when the police broke in their house without a search warrant while there was a party. The authorities legally used the 90 Days Detention Act under which you can keep a person in jail for up to 90 days without bringing charges against him. She is released and arrested again a few minutes later in the street. The second detention pressured a lot Diana who tried to commit suicide in jail after she wrote a letter in the first page of the bible to her husband Gus. She has been saved and released with the condition to have 24 hours surveillance of the house. Meanwhile, Molly stopped going to school for a while and had some trouble with schoolmates. She is brought by the mate ( Elsy ) to the black townships and then to the church were Solomon ( Elsy s brother ) is arrested. When Diana is back home, the police enters the house for a check up. Diana and Molly made them leave after Diana understood that Molly checked over the secret place where she stored the bible and read the letter. Molly and her mother had an argument about the fact that Diana wanted to leave her family by committing suicide and that takes care of the black cause more than to her family. After all this, it is announced that Solomon died in detention. A demonstration takes place after his funerals, molly is up there with her mom. The police comes and begins shooting on the people.

I think that it s a very good movie. It shows us how apartheid is practiced in South Africa and that it s a police state with a lot of authority. The acting is also good. I enjoyed watching this film.