Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but, at times, edgier as well, as evidenced by the behind-the-scenes drama that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.
Based on Robert Harvey's book "The Fall of Apartheid," "Endgame," airing on "Masterpiece" Sunday night, is the unlikely story of how a gold-mining company brought opposing parties together for secret talks in England that eventually led to freedom for Nelson Mandela and the public promise by South African President F.W. de Klerk that he would put an end to the government-sanctioned system of discrimination known since 1948 as apartheid.
Jonny Lee Miller plays Michael Young, the low-key matchmaker who eventually brings a group of African National Congress exiles, led by Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor), to the bargaining table with an unofficial delegation of white South Africans led by Professor Will Esterhuyse (William Hurt) at a remote English manor house.
People are also reading…
Half the battle is getting everyone to the table. A pre-emptive secret visit to Soweto to try to make contact with the ANC sends Young scrambling for his life. On the other side, Esterhuyse is reluctant to get involved until he realizes he's being tailed, probably by government spies.
The real power of Paula Milne's screenplay is that it avoids oversimplifying the moral complexities at the heart of the negotiations. "The culture of fear is not of our making, professor," Mbeki tells Esterhuyse. "We learned it at the feet of our masters."
Esterhuyse, meanwhile, knows just how high the stakes are for the ruling white majority in South Africa, since he's been strong-armed into being a "go-between" by Dr. Niel Barnard (Mark Strong), head of the National Intelligence Agency.
"Our fear (of ending apartheid) stems from the knowledge that one day we will be punished for all the terrible wrongs we have inflicted," he tells Mbeki.
Pete Travis directs the film as if it's the next installment in the "Bourne Identity" series and, for the most part, that makes sense. However, you may find yourself feeling a bit dyspeptic by the frenetic, paranoia-fueled camerawork of much of the film. As the talks move toward the positive conclusion we already know about, the camera slows to a more comforting pace.
The performances are superb throughout, particularly those of Miller, Hurt, Ejiofor and Clarke Peters, as Mandela. Also superb, in small but key roles, are Derek Jacobi as Consolidated Goldfields' chairman, and Timothy West as PW Botha, De Klerk's old-school predecessor.
For all the pain, degradation and death inflicted by apartheid over more than four decades (it was repealed in 1994), there is no small irony in the fact that financial greed fueled the creation of the system and, in the end, was also the reason behind its end. Money really does talk.
Review
"Endgame," a presentation of "Masterpiece Contemporary," starring Jonny Lee Miller, Chiwetel Ejiofor and William Hurt, 8 p.m. Sunday on PBS.
