Non-linear narrative has often been used to telling effect in movies for decades. Two of the world’s greatest films of all time, Citizen Kane and Rashomon , will readily come to mind.
South African film Sink , which was screened on the second day of the Kozhikode International Film Festival, is another splendid example of clever use of this technique. The drama in the film is so intense and realistically portrayed that it could have succeeded with a straight narrative, but it would not have been as big a cinematic triumph for director Brett Michael Innes.
The strength of the film is its brilliant script, which is written by Inns himself. In fact, it is based on his own novel Rachel Weeping .
Rachel is a maid from Mozambique working in the palatial house of a South African couple, Chris and Michelle, two busy executives. How loss and guilt make life difficult for these three individuals is the focal point of the movie. Compassion is another theme well rendered in the film.
The plot may burn a tad slow, but the film never loses its pace. Superb performances by the three lead artistes, Anel Alexander (Michelle), Shoki Mogkapa (Rachel), and Jacques Bessenger (Chris) have helped in making Sink a powerful, moving film about a black woman and her relations with a white couple. It is remarkable that it has come from South Africa, whose history has been darkened by apartheid for decades.
Editing by Nicholas Costaras and Innes, cinematography by Trevor Calverley, and music by Chris Letcher deserve praise too.
Sink is rated as one of the top 10 Afrikaan films of all time by writer and critic Leon van Neirop. You would have to agree with him.
