The war reparations scam that snagged a South African community

Daniel Nelson

“Based on true stories” say the co-directors of Variations On A Theme, but it’s hard to place the film in any category at all — other than quirky.

It’s poetic and funny, whimsical and serious. One critic described it as a lyrical docufiction fable.

The story-telling is unusual, too, with an explanatory voiceover filling the gaps between vignettes of life in a municipality in the mountains of Namaqualand, South Africa .

“While our film is fictional,” says co-ditrector Jason Jacobs, “it’s based on lived experiences, including the scam.” 

In the film, a motley group of residents are told that the government is on the verge of making long-overdue payments to Black soldiers who took part in the Second World War and who at the time were given a bicycle and a pair of boots. All they need do is fill in a form, pay a fee (or two) and wait for the money.

The promised money and the repeated “delays” in its arrival sparks chat among residents that reveals expectations, hopes and doubts.

The local hairdresser, for example, plans to buy new kit. Ouma (Afrikaans for grandmother) Hettie, an elderly goatherd, who is the resilient heart of the film, sees the money as belated compensation for her father’s military service, but members of her family tell her the compensation scheme is fake and press her to relinquish her solitary life amidst the nature she loves and move in with them in town. Making her screen debut at 80, Hettie is Jacobs’ grandmother. 

Some residents simply ignore the promise. They include a man who spends all hours of the day dreaming of a long-ago weekend tryst with a lover, and another resident obsessively digging under his house where he believes a previous occupant stashed a cache of diamonds.

The characters are a delight. At first I felt the approach might be patronising but Jacobs and fellow director Devon Delmar seem to delight in the foibles of their characters, played by people from the community where Jacobs grew up. 

The 65-minute film “combines fiction, family memory and the textures of village life”, which provides its special flavour, together with the way it tells its tale through a sequence of repeated static frames.

It comes loaded with praise and awards, Screen Daily described it as “a pure, fresh, surprising cinematic delight”; Sight and Sound praised “a beautiful portrait of a woman and a place”; The New Yorker’s Richard Brody highlighted the film’s “airy and luminous wide-screen images” and “lyrical vision of vast arcs of time amid dramatic social change”; South African critics have called it “a masterpiece” (Mail & Guardian) and “a jewel of a film” (LitNet). It is South Africa’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards

But you’ll have to find it on the art house film circuit.