Here is a very fine, easy going, delectable comedy from South Africa. It has wonderful music, and is unusually paced so you can actually hear and enjoy what is happening. Though at its core it features stand-up comedy, it is really a movie about cultural, religious, linguistic and generational tensions, conflicts and their resolution. Some of the musical interludes, with happenings expressed visually, are like the best in old silent films, but the music is still there to lull you along. This is not the frenetic, slapstick comedy that has come out of cinema mills in Durban and Cape Town. Material is much more thoughtful, down-to-earth and entertaining. It is also well-acted, with sound direction, cinematography and good music. The religious and social context of the film is wonderfully presented. This is a film that has open windows for some isolated and provincial people in the Rainbow Nation.
Material is a movie that was seven years in the making. It germinated from the producer Ronnie Apteker through the director and scriptwriter Craig Freimond to the lead actors Riaad Moosa and Vincent Ebrahim who both had major inputs in creating Material. The original concept had two brothers, who were estranged, but the shop they ran was a bicycle shop; Riaad Moosa transformed the type of store and what it sold. Material is a triple entendre encompassing our approach to life, what is sold in a shop, and what becomes the jokes that stand-up comedians tell alone under the spotlight.
