There isn’t a wrong note in Embeth Davidtz’s “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” screening at the M.V. Film Center starting Oct. 10. The compelling, gritty film is based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name, which recounts her childhood on a cattle farm in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the violence and political tension surrounding the 1980 election of Robert Mugabe.
We experience the entire story through the eyes of 7-year-old Bobo, in an unforgettable performance by Lexi Venter. She inhabits her life with a sense of ownership that her white skin affords. Bobo slips seamlessly between the world of her white settler parents and the harsh reality of Black Rhodesians fighting for independence. She is both wise and innocent, and full of contradictions. While Bobo loves the African stories and beliefs she learns from her beloved Sarah (Zikhona Bali), who works for the family, she also sometimes heedlessly treats her and other Black Africans as if they are there to do her bidding.
Bobo is scrappy — a small blonde child with forever dirty, tangled hair, sporting worn shorts and a ratty white T shirt. She zooms through the dry, dusty countryside on a small motorcycle with a pellet rifle slung over her shoulder. Wide-eyed, Bobo takes in the world, but very little fazes her.
In the opening scene, Bobo intrepidly makes her way to the bathroom inside the dark, creaky house while everyone else is in bed. Her voice narrates, as it does throughout the film, “Mom says we mustn’t come creeping into their room at night. We might scare her and Dad when they are sleeping. And I asked why. She said, ‘Because there’s a war on and we might think you’re a terrorist and shoot you by mistake.’” Later, Bobo ponders, asking her older, pubescent sister, Vanessa (Anita Hope Reed), if she thinks it hurts when the terrorists cut off your lips.
Bobo also takes the intense drama surrounding her mother in stride. Nicola (Embeth Davidtz) tenaciously fights for the farm, to which she believes she is entitled. We meet Nicola barely dressed in a sheer nightgown, lying in bed after yet another night of heavy drinking, wrapped around an automatic rifle. When she hears Sarah scream in the kitchen about a cobra, she wakes up, summarily shoots it, and goes on her way. Bobo, who watches the scene unfold, runs to her father (Rob Van Vuuren), who’s sitting on the porch cleaning his own rifle. She proudly informs him, while messing with a grenade, that her mother just shot the snake, making a big mess. Later, Bobo tells us, “Mom says she’ll die for this land. If she doesn’t have a gun, she’ll fight with her bare hands. I believe her.”
But Bobo is also full of a tender longing for affection. Although she does not receive it from her parents, she does get it from Sarah, who dotes upon her. Sarah’s affection for the white child, however, puts her in danger of being seen by other Black Africans as a collaborator, creating tension with an angrily brooding Jacob (Fumani N. Shilubana), who also works for the family on the farm.
The constant threat of the carnage caused by the terrorists, broadcast relentlessly on the television news, permeates daily life both on the farm and even in the white colonial enclave, which comes with its own dangers as the film progresses.
“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” is a deeply felt, complex drama in which everyone, in their own way, is fighting to find their place in a drastically changing world.
“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” starts on Oct. 10. For information and tickets, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
