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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
i've watched zulu a couple of times, great war movie, i like it, starts alfie, whatsisname, michael something, but i liked the movie more the first time, so when i got it again, all excited, i realized the zulus were faceless creatures. literally, a mass of spear-wielding negros that chant and play drums in the distance, putting fear into the mind of whitey-- but no personalities that i recall. i think it's racist in that sense-- in that the zulus are subordinate and accessory to the british story. you could have replaced the zulu army with a plague of locust or a wildebeest stampede and it would have been the same-- english heroics vs. "an overpowering force of nature." so yes, the english are humans and the zulus are nature.
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You must spread more rep, etc...
Yeah, it's definitely guilty of presenting the Zulus as a faceless mass. I suppose in many ways it's a British Western, with the depleted 'cavalry' defending a 'ranch' against wave after wave of 'injuns', etc. It's progressive in terms of the tradition of British war films dealing with Empire by showing no triumphalism in victory and by presenting the Zulus as noble, intelligent warriors - much as Westerns started to do around the same time in their treatment of, say, the Apaches. But again you're right; even Westerns usually gave the Indians a figurehead (like Geronimo) which
Zulu never does. So yeah, they're ultimately presented more as a force of nature against an army of individuals.
I suppose in that sense Zulu was modestly progressive only in terms of the tradition of Empire-set war/adventure movies that preceded it.