The Gods Must Be Crazy (1984) 20th Century Fox/Comedy RT: 109 minutes Rated PG (language, comic violence, tribal nudity) Director: Jamie Uys Screenplay: Jamie Uys Music: John Boshoff Cinematography: Buster Reynolds and Robert Lewis Release date: October 26, 1984 (US) Cast: N!xau, Marius Weyers, Sandra Prinsloo, Michael Thys, Louw Verwey, Nic de Jager. Box Office: $90M (World) Dubbed in English from Afrikaans, !Kung and Tswana
Rating: *** ½
The South African-made comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy played for a year at the Ritz Five here in Philadelphia. This was a few years before I became a regular at the city’s most prestigious arthouse theater. Being the son of parents terrified by the prospect of traveling into the big bad city for any reason, I didn’t get to see it until it came out on video in November 1986. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate what a comic treasure The Gods Must Be Crazy truly is. It wasn’t until I rewatched it this past week that I saw its brilliance. It’s part National Geographic documentary, part Three Stooges comedy and part observation of the dichotomy between humanity and nature. When taken as a whole, The Gods Must Be Crazy is a movie unlike any you’ve ever seen.
Written and directed by Jamie Uys (Dingaka), The Gods Must Be Crazy starts off with a narrator describing the daily existence of a tribe of Bushmen in the Kalahari Desert. He talks about their peaceful lives unencumbered by crime, money or private ownership. They live simply off the land and get along well. This all changes when a Coke bottle dropped by a pilot lands near their village. It’s found by a little Bushman named Xi (N!xau) who takes it back to his tribe. They’ve never seen anything like it. They assume it’s a gift from the gods. It’s harder than any substance they’ve ever come across. It can be put to many uses- e.g. cooking utensil, snake skin smoother, musical instrument, tool, etc. The problem is there’s just one. Soon it creates problems within the tribe. For the first time, they experience things like envy, greed and violence. The only solution, as they see it, is to return it to the gods. To do that, Xi will have to journey to the edge of the earth and throw it away.
Meanwhile in civilization (presumably Johannesburg), journalist Kate Thompson (Prinsloo, Deadly Jaws) has had it with chaotic city life. She takes a job as a schoolteacher in Botswana where’s she met at the bus stop by microbiologist Andrew Steyn (Weyers, DeepStar Six), a sweet but clumsy oaf who makes a bloody fool of himself every time he’s around her. He picks her up in a jeep with no brakes. It leads to a series of great sight gags that culminates with the jeep up a tree. Adding to the confusion is a band of guerrillas led by incompetent buffoon Sam Boga (Verwey) fleeing the area after a failed assassination attempt on the country’s president. In the midst of it all is sweet, naïve Xi who gets pulled into the madness.
Much of the humor in The Gods Must Be Crazy comes from Xi’s misunderstanding of so-called civilization. He approaches situations thinking like a Bushman. He has no preconceived notions of Western society. All of his actions are based on what he feels are logical conclusions. When the outcome isn’t what he expects, that’s when he gets into trouble. Of course, the slapstick is also hilarious. Andrew is attracted to Kate, but can’t get it together in front of her. When he tries to save her from a stampeding rhino, she thinks he’s making a sexual advance. He tries to explain that rhinos are naturally inclined to stamp out fires, but she thinks he’s making it up. This gets a bit redundant after a while but that is the only fault I can find with The Gods Must Be Crazy and since it’s a minor one, it’s okay.
The Gods Must Be Crazy is still the most successful South African movie to be released in the US. One of the great things about it is that it doesn’t even attempt to address the issue of apartheid, a hot-button topic in the 80s. This is due in part to the movie taking place in a part of South Africa where blacks and whites live and work together side by side. It’s also because I suspect Uys didn’t want to weigh down his movie with some important political message. Either way, it makes for a pleasurable viewing experience. It has the look of a low-budget project especially with its use of dubbing instead of subtitles. For scenes involving Xi and his tribe, a voiceover translates their language which consists of a lot of clicks (the “!” in N!xau’s name represents a click). Xi has a natural, unaffected screen presence. He never comes off as ignorant or dumb. He’s a sweet little man uncorrupted by modern society. The rest of the cast does a fine job. Weyers and Prinsloo have nice comic chemistry.
The scenery in The Gods Must Be Crazy is gorgeous especially the shots of God’s Window at the end. The cinematography by Buster Reynolds and Robert Lewis is also quite good. Uys shoots a lot of The Gods Must Be Crazy with the film slightly speeded-up. It gives the movie’s comic energy a nice boost. I also like how he contrasts Xi’s simple way of life with our complicated one. Even though The Gods Must Be Crazy technically came before it (it was made in 1980), it recalls Koyaanisqatsi in that respect. It really is a brilliant little movie. That it’s also very funny is a sweet bonus. This is a movie that demands to be rediscovered by today’s audiences. It’s a reminder that not all comedies have to be cynical, crude and loud. Sometimes quiet, genial humor makes the bigger impact.
