After viewing the first five minutes, it dawned on me that I had read this book a few years ago. It is a little hard to identify with the central figure, played by the quirky Malkovich. He makes decisions without a moments thought for their consequences. It would seem that he has little if any regard for anyone. So when he disgraces himself with his totally unprofessional behavior, he finds himself in the South African countryside, in the middle of racial tension following the end of apartheid. What is happening is an uneasy meeting of the two cultures as David (played by Malkovich) moves in with his daughter and stumbles around in his arrogant stupor, causing her no end of pain. She has her own issues. She is ultimately gang raped by some of the local blacks but refuses to rock the boat. She has no place to go and finds herself disenfranchised. Malkovich is a coward when it comes down to it or he is just plain stupid or so shortsighted. Anyway, Coetzee tells a great tale with a chance for reclamation all around. it's a purification through suffering. The cultures need time to settle in and it won't be easy.

It's a rather laminous story of a self-indulgent professor in South Africa who learns that there's more to life than the hedonic treadmill. At least I think that's what it's about.

Malkovich teaches poetry and finds nothing wrong with Lucifer's "dark heart". It's even admirable in a way. He has a bit of it himself. He seduces a beautiful young student, Antoinette Engel, who is clearly uncomfortable with his fevered pursuit and with his love making. She stops coming to class and he fakes a passing grade on her mid term exam. Her father learns about the affair and Malkovich is asked to resign. He freely admits his guilt but shows no remorse. "Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire", he quotes from William Blake, who was quite a nut himself.

At leisure he leaves the city and moves in with his daughter, Jessica Haines, who has a rambling cottage in the remote countryside. Haines makes a living growing flowers and selling them at the market. She shares the land with an older African man, Ebouaney, who lives down the road. She also takes care of the stray dogs who overflow the local shelter.

While Ebouaney is gone off to seek a wife, Malkovich and Haines are viciously attacked by a trio of young black kids. The kids gang bang Haines, set fire to Malkovich, steal everything of value, including the car, and shoot all the dogs in their cages -- laughing all the while. It's a brutal scene but the barbarity is no more explicit than it needs to be.

So far, so good. Quite good in fact. But after this I began to wonder where the screenplay was headed.

Haines is unwilling to call the police in on the matter because one of the youthful miscreants may be a relative of Ebouaney's wife. She doesn't change her mind even when it develops that she's pregnant and even after Malkovich has begged her.

Haines decides to settle the matter by becoming Ebouaney's wife, which will be a strictly socioeconomic arrangement. Ebouaney gets the land but Haines will keep her house.

This Ebouaney is a key figure and he's inscrutable. It's said that he made Haines' flower garden possible, but he's an all-around queer fellow. (It's a finely measured performance.) Malkovich is snoozing on the couch in the cottage and Ebouaney simply walks in without knocking, seats himself next to Malkovich, and turns the TV on to a loud soccer game.

When Ebouaney returns, following the attack, he doesn't visit the Haines cottage but busies himself with building an irrigation system on his land. Malkovich strolls over and asks if Ebouaney has heard of the attack. "Yes. Very bad," he replies phlegmatically, "but you're all right now." Well, Malkovich is hardly "all right." His head and face have been burned and he's swathed in bandages. "I'm all right if you mean I'm still alive". Ebouaney is still smiling but turns back to his work without an answer.

But, as time passes, Malkovich thinks things over. And he, who has thought of no one but himself, decides to apologize ritually to the family of the student he seduced. They don't exactly forgive him profusely. Mostly they stare at him in silence as he cow tows to the family and walks out the door.

Back at the cottage, Haines has decided to have the child and "marry" Ebouaney, which will provide her with protection from further attacks. Malkovich is aghast but, again, on thinking things over, he returns to her and she leads him into the house, preceded by her big belly, for a cup of tea. He follows with a resigned smile.

The end.

I kept trying to figure out what the messages were supposed to be. I mean, unless the plot is aiming at something, then it's simply pointless, isn't it? One unrelated events following another unrelated event? Could it be that Malkovich is finally able to recognize the immoral quality of his "dark heart," that there is a parallel between his seduction of the innocent student and the gang bang of his daughter? That's not only banal but it's a big stretch to equate the student affair with the pillaging of a peaceful cottage, a violent multiple rape, and the attempted murder of Malkovich by setting him afire. Morally, what the three vandals did to Haines is the same as what Malkovich did to the reluctant student? Huh?

Yet that seems to be it. There's more to life than self indulgence, Alfie. Some desires are best left unacted. And the ending suggested some sort of redemption -- not that Malkovich didn't need some -- but the meeting between Haines and Malkovich, his friendly smile, that cup of tea, left me more puzzled than satisfied. Malkovich parked his car a mile away and walked down to the house for this climactic meeting with Haines. Why? I mean, why didn't he drive down to the house?

Some applause is due to the writers for not bringing up racial or political conflicts. Race isn't mentioned once, and the few references to political problems are oblique. The two chief conflicts are between cultures and between individual values. Unless (and this is almost too horrible to think) this is meant as a story of justifiable payback against whites for so many years of Apartheid. In any case, the photography could hardly be improved upon. This part of South Africa looks a little like the American Southwest, a kind of scenic semi-desert.

While John Malkovich gives a terrific performance as the dismissed professor, who had a relationship with a student in his romantic poetry class, the film should have stayed with that subject matter. Instead, it goes on to detail his move to the Eastern Cape to live with his daughter in a remote area. They're victimized by local natives in the town and the daughter is pregnant from one of the 3 men who raped her.

In other words, Malkovich undergoes the performance of one who tormented a woman only to find himself tormented when his daughter is molested.

His daughter's insistence on entering an unusual alliance to avoid an abortion is most perplexing.

I enjoyed his lecture of Lucifer in the poetry class. Wasn't he describing himself?