Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom Chadwick whisks the audience efficiently and shockingly through the major events of 20th-century South African history: the extension and heavy enforcement of the Pass Laws; the stark brutality of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre of black protestors; the ANC's ensuing campaign of sabotage; and the trial at which Mandela and his fellow ANC members were sentenced to life imprisonment. Yet, if the film is a tale of political action, it is also one of wider personal sacrifice, of which Mandela's own 27-year imprisonment is but one element. The story dwells, rightly, on the ferocity of absence: the relentless hollowing-out of what should have been a happy family life. We glimpse the husbandless wife, the fatherless children, the space for resentments and infidelities. When Mandela is finally released from jail, he finds himself married to a nation, but estranged from his dearly loved wife. If Elba, echoing the distinctive cadences of Mandela's speech, always retains an air of reasoned dignity even in more hot-headed moments, Harris's mesmerising Winnie is all flint and fury. The film does not flinch from her disturbing side: Harris, though physically more angular than the real, round-cheeked Winnie, reveals the capacity to chill deeply as well as charm. Her Winnie burns first with passion, later with rage, and finally - when Mandela is in prison - she can be heard fiercely endorsing retribution against alleged informers that leads to the horrific practice of "necklacing" suspects with petrol-soaked rubber tyres set alight. Yet, Chadwick also exposes the cruel circumstances in which Winnie's ruthlessness was forged: the state torture, solitary confinement, exile and house arrest that drain the joie de vivre from her and replace it with something more bitter. Somehow, Mandela himself manages to move in the opposite direction: there is a small, touching scene in which he gently chastises his grand-children for ridiculing his white guards. Nearing the end, with Elba's face partly immobilised in ageing make-up, the pace slows respectfully along with him. There are no tremendous risks in this solid, cool-headed film, no unforgettable cinematic moments save for the thumping historical drama in the story itself - but in a way I was grateful for that. It side-stepped the risk of crudity.