The Interpreter

1,056 words

The Interpreter is a new thriller starring Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman, directed by Sydney Pollack. It is a well-crafted, well-acted, but ultimately mediocre film. Left to my own devices, I would probably not have seen it at all. But I wanted to spend some time with a friend, and he suggested the film. Which brings me to my recommendation: while I don’t suggest that you seek out The Interpreter, if you are set on seeing a film, I can at least say that there is little here to offend a racially conscious White or to corrupt a racially unconscious one. Indeed, there are some interesting elements of racial realism in the film.

The Interpreter is set primarily in New York, with the opening scene set in Matobo, a fictional Southern African republic that is a composite of Zimbabwe and South Africa (the White inhabitants have both English and Dutch names). Matobo was “liberated” from its White colonial oppressors by Doctor Zuwanie, played by the blue-eyed Mulatto Earl Cameron. The stately White-haired Zuwanie is supposed to remind us of the Communist terrorist-statesman Nelson Mandela. (Zuwanie reminisces about his first visit to New York, when he was treated like a hero–just like Mandela.)

Once independent, however, Matobo followed the course of White-created societies from Detroit to Haiti to Africa itself when handed over to violent, lazy, stupid, immoral Blacks: poverty, crime, corruption, and chaos. Doctor Zuwanie, like so many other African leaders, became a bloody tyrant. His brutality spawned two rebel movements, which he fought to suppress with equal brutality. One group is led by Kuman-Kuman (George Harris), the other by Ajene Xola (Curtiss Cook). They accuse Zuwanie of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” He accuses them of “terrorism.”

The opening scenes of The Interpreter are a horrifying composite of Africa today: a parched dusty road where a woman carries a load on her head and a man whose eyes have been gouged out is led along by a child, a crumbling stadium (built by Whites and ruined by Blacks) stinking with the rotting corpses of massacred Blacks, Black children playing soccer who turn out to be cold-blooded, sadistic killers in Dr. Zuwanie’s militia. Their ball is a severed human head.

It is easy to feel sympathy for the victims of such brutality. But one has to keep in mind that the victims would probably have behaved in exactly the same way, given the chance, and they probably had. Not every victim is innocent. Not every loser is virtuous. Savage African civil wars are not a reason for importing the losers as refugees, to swell the welfare rolls and prisons of White nations. They are a reason to exclude Africans from White nations altogether.

I was genuinely surprised by these images of Black savagery, particularly in a Hollywood movie directed by a Jew. Moreover, there is not even a hint of blaming it on Whites. I was also surprised by the subliminal message that Nelson Mandela might be something other than the saint he is portrayed to be. With one exception, all the villains in the movie are Blacks: brutish, ugly, savage, sinister Blacks. The White exception is just a mercenary working for Blacks. With one exception, the heroes of the movie are all White. The Black exception is just an incompetent who ends up getting killed. (There is an Asian who is supposed to be on the right side, but he comes off as just a bureaucrat. The director, Sydney Pollack, casts himself as a Secret Service agent, but is presented as obnoxious and unethical.)

The interpreter in The Interpreter is Silvia Broome, played by Nicole Kidman. She is, for the most part, a very appealing character: smart, resourceful, idealistic, and exquisitely Nordic: blonde, blue-eyed, and very fair. The hero is Tobin Keller, a Secret Service agent played by Sean Penn. Broome and Keller meet when she overhears someone talking about assassinating Doctor Zuwanie while he speaks before the United Nations, and Keller is assigned to investigate the case. Keller’s boss, played by director Pollack, coldly decides to use Broome as bait, and Keller has to watch over the trap to make sure she is not killed. There are plenty of tense and suspenseful scenes, a bit of tepid romance, some shocking violence, some stylish directing, and some acting. We learn that both Broome and Keller are haunted by the traumas of losing loved ones. This tiresome cliché is about as deep an account of character and motivation as today’s movies are capable of presenting. A lot happens in this movie, much of it diverting, but none of it really managed to affect me deeply.

To some extent, the movie tries to obfuscate its elements of racial realism by presenting the appealing heroine Broome as a woman who deeply loves Africa and its indigenous featherless bipeds–in spite of the fact that she lost all four of her immediate family to Black killers! She is supposed to be exemplary, but any sane person will just think she is crazy. Broome is presented as a woman who took up arms to fight Zuwanie for the rights of Blacks and Whites alike. (This is actually subversive: showing armed White resistance to Black tyranny as justifiable. But then again, Broome decides that non-violence is the better path, hence her decision to be an interpreter at the United Nations.) It is even mentioned that she was for a time the lover of the Black revolutionary Ajene Xola, until it became politically problematic for him to be associated with a White woman. (Again, setting aside the miscegenation angle, it is subversive to show an admirable White to be a victim of Black racism.) In the end, Broome decides to return to Matobo, in spite of a budding romance with Penn. She gives up a strong, decent White man for the lure of the Dark Continent. Not a very satisfying ending.

At first I thought that Broome’s decision was psychologically unrealistic. But then it dawned on me, sadly, that millions of Whites live in Southern Africa. Most of them were born there. To them it is home, and they are held there in part by their attachment to their homelands, while the civilizations they built are descending into Black savagery. I hope they can save themselves–and we can save ourselves–before it is too late.