Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Moffie’ On Hulu, A Brutal War Drama About A Gay Teenager In Apartheid-Era South Africa

War dramas come in all shapes and sizes; we’ve seen stories of winners and losers, of PTSD and time running out, of the plans that happen on and off the battlefield and behind closed doors. We’ve seen macho men and cartoonish heroes, scientists and journalists fighting the good fight. In Moffie, now streaming on Hulu, we’re taken to apartheid-era South Africa, where all white boys are required to serve two years in the military. 

MOFFIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Teenager Nicholas van der Swart (Kai Luke Brummer) is heading off for his compulsory two years of military service in South Africa. It’s 1981, apartheid is law, and the country has begun military operations to help stop the spread of communism. On the eve of his departure, his family comes together to send him off, and his father gives him a girly magazine to use as “ammunition” if he needs it, a gesture Nicholas gives an awkward smile. He embarks on his journey to bootcamp, along with dozens of other young white boys on their way to training – boys who all lean out the window at one stop to harass a Black man waiting for the train.

Bootcamp is a horror show in more ways than one; the boys are pushed to their physical limits, holding their guns out for hours at a time, doing crunches with bricks in their arms, pushups while their sergeant kicks them in the face, days-long treks without any food. The physical torment alone is enough to kill someone, but the psychological torture inflicted on them by their superiors is truly heinous; they’re called every name in the book, forced on pointless errands, told to put their vomit back in their mouths, tricked into thinking they’re about to finally eat after a long day of work, threatened for no reason other than perhaps wearing the wrong expression.

In addition to the reinforcement of their racism, the recruits are also trained to despise “moffies”, the South African slur for “faggot”. (If you’re caught participating in any act deemed mildly homosexual, you’re condemned to Ward 22, the psych ward). Nicholas, trying hard to hide his own sexuality, forms a connection with another soldier in the trenches, one that makes a lasting impact on him. Over the course of Moffie, these boys might become men, but at what cost?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The unrelenting bootcamp scenes inevitably evoke the brutality of Full Metal Jacket, though the story at the heart of Moffie is one all its own. Its moments of tenderness also bring to mind films like Moonlight.

Performance Worth Watching: Moffie really belongs to Kai Luke Brummer. He does so much without saying much of anything, drawing us in with his piercing blue eyes and perceptive gaze. A lot of the film feels like it’s through his eyes, and we do catch a glimpse of his face, it’s near-emotionless, something like a canvas for us to draw our own conclusions from. The few moments we do see him break open and show us a bit more of what’s going on beneath the surface, it’s incredibly impactful, adding dimension to this heavy, harrowing story.

Memorable Dialogue: While there were some poignant pieces of dialogue in Moffie – and more vile exchanges than anything else – the lingering camerawork and visual storytelling is really what stuck with me by the end of it all.

Sex and Skin: There’s some quiet, understated sexy time between two of the men, some blurry full-frontal in the showers, and a masturbation scene.

Our Take: Moffie is not for everyone. The harrowing, unrelenting drama based on André Carl van der Merwe’s beloved autobiographical novel doesn’t shy away from the most heinous parts of South Africa’s history. The bootcamp scenes are particularly difficult to stomach, with all of the physical and psychological abuse thrown around at the conscripts. There were moments I had to watch through my hands, unsettled by what I knew to be an accurate account of what was done to these new recruits. It’s not pretty, and the fact that all of this is in an effort to create soldiers meant to defend an apartheid regime only makes it uglier.

While the focus of Moffie has more to do with the regime’s homophobia than it does the intense racism that has largely defined it for decades, it still manages to tell a powerful, important story without feeling like important issues have been neglected in the process. It’s part war drama, part coming-of-age tale, an account of a boy forced to defend a system that is actively oppressing him. Kai Luke Brummer delivers a deeply memorable performance as Nicholas van der Swart; he may not use words much, but he tells all kinds of tales with his baby blues. Moffie isn’t much of a talking film, anyway, so having a mostly silent protagonist only adds to its mesmerizing storytelling style.

Where Moffie succeeds is in its balancing of all the brutality of bootcamp with the tenderness of Nicholas’s journey and his connection with Stassen. Without that important component, we’d simply be left with artfully shot torture porn – and there’s plenty of that out there already. Moffie is easily one of the best foreign films of the year so far, and I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t propel Brummer and director Oliver Hermanus to mainstream success.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Much of Moffie may be difficult to stomach, but it’s powerful, necessary storytelling – the kind we could use a lot more of these days.

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines, hogging the mic at karaoke, and thirst-tweeting. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.

Watch Moffie on Hulu