Nick Broomfield has an uncanny ability to unlock his subject's thoughts with key sequences of visual observations that without context might seem unremarkable. The maverick director follows up "The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife" with "His Big White Self", a sequel of sorts that catches up with the titular trio of his career defining 1991 documentary that started off as an exploration of apartheid reign in South Africa that developed into a ghastly portrayal of a Nazi propaganda progeny (The Leader, Eugene Terre'Blanche) who rose swiftly and bloodily to power, and the lives of two close followers in JP (his driver) and Anita (his driver's wife). 15 years later and the portraits change somewhat, with the trio now broken up. But the creepiness of the country's still prevalent white power ideology and the willingness to martyr one's self for that belief remains. The only closure Broomfield gets from his rollicking by the intimidating Terre'Blanche all those years ago, is by tearing a page from Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" playbook and conniving his way back into the Leader's household. And the only closure that we get to the hauntingly glazed over Anita of yesteryear is her transformed credo of believing integration is now the way forward, all subtly hitting home in the final scenes.
Review of His Big White Self
