What starts out as a simple tale of the bush turns into a wild adventure with a coke bottle, revolutionaries, a dis-enchanted office worker turned teacher, and a scientist who studies animal dung with no skills around women. Add a smart-tongued mechanic and a 4x4 called the antichrist, and you have one of the funniest movies ever to come out of South Africa. You laugh as much at the ludicrous nature of some of the situations as much as what they want you to laugh at. You may never look at Africa the same again.

 

 

 

I remember the first 5 times I saw this movie I was laughing so much that tears rolled down my face. This movie was very well done and I have nothing bad to say about this movie. I definetly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to laugh.... and if it doesn't make you laugh then you better check your pulse.

 

 

 

 

It seemed simplistic, yet it was so brilliant in its execution that it ranks as one of the more interesting films of the last century. Unique and different, this film showed a different side of Africa and introduced one of the few genuine characters in the African Bushman. Highly recommended for anyone who has not seen this film. If you can find it, rent it.

 

 

 

This movie is not a big budget action film, this movie is not an emotional soap opera, or a tearjerker, this is a simple little film about the simple things in life. This South African produced film has proven to be one of the best I have seen in quite a long time. N!xau, a native bushman plays a bushman in this movie. A coke bottle has destroyed his villages life as it has been proven to be an excellent tool, but everyone wants it. So the young Bushman is told by the village elders to throw the ‘evil thing' off the ends of the earth.

 

On his long and perilous journey he runs into all kinds of different people, some terrorists, a man studying animals, an uptight urban teacher, and some trouble along the way, obviously. The movie is just so funny, the film is told from the point of view of the bushman, and is poignant as well. The movie manages to be very different, and extremely unconventional, at least by American standards. 

 

I have to admit I am glad I got to see this movie. A lot of great foreign films do not make it over to America, and that is sad, but this movie is excellent, it is funny, sweet, and all around one of the best movies I have seen. The writing is congruent and sharp, the performances do not at all seemed forced and the ensemble here manage to come off appropriately hilarious without taking away from the plot.

 

There are some political overtones here as well, as the movie takes a few shots at apartheid when it was still around. Also in my mind the movie is extremely satirical of the instability that the region faces. The funniest part of the movie were the terrorists. They were so incredibly inept and silly I couldn't help laugh at them. If they weren't tripping over closing doors they were tripping over themselves.

 

Marius Weyers as the biologist who is clumsy but well meaning also steals the show, and his assistant, played by Louw Verway is excellent, but the real star of the show is N!Xau, who makes such an excellent lead and does wonderful here. What amazes me about him was he was about forty when he did this film. There is no way for him to know when he was born, but the man looks so youthful, it is incredible, I thought he was a teenager! Shows you how much I know. Anyway see this incredible film, it is more than worth it.

 

 

Don't be put off by the talk of poor production values, bad dubbing, goofy Benny Hill-esque slapstick, and questionable acting. Once you get a look at the enormous smile on Xi's face, you'll forget all of that. This is one of the most gentle, pleasant, and likable movies I've seen in a long time (all of that in a good way).

 

I'd always heard about it, but somehow managed to miss it over the years. Finally saw it this weekend, and it's a real gem. For you DVD viewers, there's a documentary with interview footage of Xi. The only problem--no subtitles! Some bozo obviously blew it on the transfer, making it possibly the most frustrating doc ever produced...Be warned!

 

A unique film with a brilliant combination of slapstick,subtle humour,wonderful music, brilliant wildlife and scenic shots, all beautifully woven into a piece in an almost "road-style" movie around the adventures of a bushman. 

 

Like any story, there are some aspects which are slightly unbelievable if you stop to think - but the skill of the film is that it is sufficiently convincing to suspend such unbelief whilst you watch.The message of the film is brilliantly presented, subtly challenging the belief that white civilization has all the answers, gently poking fun at many of our western assumptions (no idea why anyone thinks it's racist - it may be the opposite)! 

 

Some of the high points for me personally were the scenery, the wildlife, and the African huts, children and music. Having lived in Africa for 3 years it was absolutely true to life, and brought back fond memories. This is a classic that will bear watching time and time again, and so different from the run of the mill films generally churned out. A classic - 9/10.

 

 

 

I've probably seen this film five or six times over the years, from its initial U.S. "art-house" run in the late 1980s (I can still vividly remember my experience seeing it in the Coconut Grove theater near where I was going to university) to last night. It's been one of my most consistent 10s. Although my ratings tend to fluctuate on multiple viewings for many films, I don't believe that I've ever thought The Gods Must be Crazy was lower than a 10.

 

The film works so well because of its odd confluence of styles, which gradually merge. You could almost say the structure is Hegelian, with a thesis, two antitheses, and something of a synthesis at the end. The common thread throughout is a very tongue-in-cheek critique, in the mode of a parable, of both culture/society/civilization and views about culture- society- civilization, including politics, religion, mores, and so on.

 

The film begins with the story of Xixo, or just "Xi" (N!xau, in one of the many spellings of this actor's name) and his fellow bushmen, who live in the Kalahari Desert. A narrator (Paddy O'Byrne) tells us about their lifestyle. Before long, this is contrasted with footage of life in the big city in Johannesburg. The narration continues with the same tone, as if we're unfamiliar with modern, western culture. We meet Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo), who is getting fed up with her white-collar existence.

We move back to the bushmen. A man in a passing small aircraft nonchalantly tosses a Coke bottle out the window. It lands close to Xi, who has never seen anything like it before. Eventually it causes all kinds of problems and Xi tries to get rid of it. We are also introduced to a thread about Sam Boga (Louw Verwey), who is leading rebels in Burundi. We see them try to assassinate the President. After this, they're pursued by the Burundian military. Meanwhile, Kate has decided to go to Botswana to be a teacher, and there she meets Andrew Styne (Marius Weyers). Eventually, all of these threads come together.

 

The plot may sound like a mess, and it probably would be under lesser hands, but producer- writer-editor-director Jamie Uys keeps the disparate threads remarkably focused and coherent. His timing for each and for the transitions between threads is impeccable, and the way they move together is nothing short of ingenious.

 

There has been no shortage of ink spilled in (often-negative) criticism of The Gods Must be Crazy. Unfortunately, a lot of the criticism is ridiculous and profoundly misconceived. Many see the film as racist. A lot of people who can't comprehend the fact/fiction distinction have criticized the film for inaccurate portrayals of bushmen and other characters. Uys' humor and social critiques are frequently misunderstood.

 

It's significant that O'Byrne's narrative tone is very similar to Peter Jones' narrative tone for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Whether this was a direct influence on Uys is not as important as the contextual clues it provides (the Hitchhiker's Guide mini-series featuring Jones was not completed until 1981, but the BBC radio show, which was the original format for Hitchhiker's Guide and which also featured Jones' narration, aired in 1978). The narration is extremely tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic. Uys is spoofing bushmen, civilization, and also some of the misconceptions about bushmen. The narration is also meant as a kind of distancing technique. Modern western civilization is explained to us as if we're aliens learning about this world.

 

This is all in service of a much more serious, different kind of point. The bushmen are shown as they are to enable a Lord of the Flies (1963 & 1990, based on William Golding's 1954 book)-like examination of civilization. The bushmen are the schoolboys of Lord of the Flies in their initial shipwrecked state. The Coke bottle symbolizes the entrance of civilization in that "virgin" culture, and we see the havoc the new concepts cause. The Johannesburg and Burundi material both exist in the film to give us a "flash forward" to what that introduction of civilization can lead to. In the case of Burundi, it's a direct extension of the fighting over possessions, including land. In the case of Johannesburg, it's a spiraling web of miserableness. It's not a coincidence that the bushmen learn both violence and unhappiness when civilization appears, and it's not an accident that we initially examine these things from an "alien" perspective.

Uys wants us to look at where we stand as a civilization and reassess it--an especially poignant message coming from a South African in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Don't forget that Xi is a hero here--he's the most authentic character in the film, and he's the one who enables the resolution of the dilemma in the climax.

 

The material in Botswana, especially as the threads merge, suggests a kind of solution, a kind of balance, although it's significant that the solution is far from perfect,and to an extent parties go their separate ways again. Uys seems to be saying that even if there is a solution to civilization's woes, it's going to be complex and probably less than perfect.

 

Easing up on the analysis for a minute, all you may need to know is that The Gods Must be Crazy is a very funny but poignant film. The humor ranges from subtle and intellectual to crazy slapstick (especially whenever Weyers is around--he's very gifted at slapstick). Uys delivers beautifully filmed exotic locations, a maybe surprising amount of violence in the Sam Boga segments (although somewhat cartoonish and funny violence--these segments often resemble Woody Allen's 1971 film, Bananas), a lot of adventure, a fair amount of suspense, and even a charming romance.

 

Do not let the ridiculous, negative ideological criticism dissuade you. This is a classic--a masterpiece--that presents both surface entertainment and complex, "deep" themes and subtexts. If you haven't seen it yet you must.

 

Commentaires

-Le narrateur dans la version française est le réalisateur Yves Robert.
-Le film a connu un succès considérable dans le monde et en France (5 950 000 entrées), rendant le réalisateur et son interprète bochiman N!xau célèbres. Latentation fut grande d’exploiter le filon. Uys n’y résista pas et une seconde version sortit en 1989. D’autres films du même réalisateur furent accusés d’appuyer les thèsesde l’apartheid encore en vigueur à cette époque.

*
-Bien que ce film fût entièrement financé par des capitaux sud-africains, il fut présenté comme un film du Botswana (où il fut en partie tourné) afin de contourner l'embargo(le boycott plutôt non ?) décrété par nombre de pays à l'encontre de l'Afrique du Sud, pour cause d'apartheid.

*
-En France, les distributeurs exploitèrent à l'époque la soudaine notoriété de Jamie Uys en projetant dans les salles deux films qui étaient en fait des montages deséquences tirées d'une émission appelée Camera X créée par Uys à la télévision sud-africaine sur le modèle de La Caméra Invisible chère à Jacques Rouland. Cesfilms furent nommés Dieu me savonne et Les anges se fendent la gueule.(Toujours aussi nazes les titres,hein!?)

*
-Au début du film, on peut voir certains plans tournés dans l'usine BMW de Rosslyn. Cette usine était à l'époque la seule de la marque située hors du territoire allemand.
-Afin de faciliter la commercialisation du film à l'étranger, il fut tourné en anglais. Néanmoins, le fort accent afrikaner de l'actrice Sandra Prinsloo incita les distributeursaméricains à faire redoubler toutes les lignes de dialogue de cette dernière par une actrice à l'accent plus  "neutre"
 

 

Dans une tribu isolée de Bochimans du Kalahari, sans contact avec la « civilisation », se produit un miracle : un objet extraordinaire est tombé du ciel. Transparent et très dur, il peut servir de pilon, de flûte, de récipient et de bien d’autres choses encore. Un cadeau des dieux pour ce peuple sympathique où l’on partage tout. Oui mais...Il s'agit en fait d'une vulgaire bouteille de Coca-Cola, qu’un aviateur peu scrupuleux a jetée par-dessus bord. Cette bouteille est si utile que tout le monde en a besoin en même temps.

La belle entente d’autrefois fait place à des querelles incessantes. Pour avoir fait un tel cadeau, pas de doute, les dieux sont tombés sur la tête.Le conseil se réunit et décide que Xhixho  ira au bout du monde pour rendre aux dieux leur cadeau empoisonné...

 

Titre original : The Gods Must Be Crazy

Titre français : Les dieux sont tombés sur la tête

Réalisation : Jamie Uys

Scénario : Jamie Uys

Photographie : Robert Lewis, Buster Reynolds

Montage : Jamie Uys

Musique originale : John Boshoff

Production : Jamie Uys

Sociétés de distribution : Jensen Farley Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox

Budget : 5 000 000 $

Langue : anglais / afrikaans / ju|'hoan / ungwatsi

Format : couleur - 2:35 - mono

Durée : 109 min

Dates de sortie :

Afrique du Sud : 1980

Norvège : 21 août 1981

France : 19 janvier 1983

États-Unis : 13 juillet 1984

 

Les dieux sont tombés sur la tête est un film botswanais et sud-africain écrit et réalisé par le sud-africain Jamie Uys, sorti en 1980.

 

Xi, le Bushman et sa famille vivent paisiblement dans le désert de Kalahari dans l'état du Botswana. Un jour, une bouteille de Coca-Cola vide, tombée d'un avion, leur semble être tombée du ciel. Après un moment de curiosité, les Bushmen découvrent à la bouteille un tas d'utilisations qui facilitent leur travail et améliorent leur vie. 

 

Naissent des sentiments de jalousie jusqu'alors inconnue d'eux. Xi décide de rendre la bouteille aux dieux pour s'en débarrasser et entame un voyage jusqu'au bout du monde. Pendant ce temps, Kate Tempson, une journaliste blanche, ne supporte plus son travail et prend un poste d'institutrice en brousse, dans un état voisin

 

Marius Weyers : Andrew Steyn

Sandra Prinsloo : Kate Thompson

NIxau : Xixo

Louw Verwey : Sam Boga

Michael Thys : Mpudi

Nic De Jager : Jack Hind