A tale of survival, Cy Endfield's Sands of the Kalahari is a story that examines the primitive nature of man, showcasing how humanity itself is a victim of civilization, programmed by technology and privilege to resist our more primitive, animalistic state. The film chronicles the exploits of a crew of plane crash survivors whom now find themselves in the middle of the sweltering heat of the southern Africa, hundreds of miles from civilization. With no technology and limited resources, this group is tasked with trying to survive, setting up camp at a nearby rock formation, happening to share the space with a nearby pack of savage baboons. With food and water at a minimum, the group soon finds themselves battling their own survivalist nature, as one man in particular, O'Brien, decides that his best chance of survival entails embracing the survival of the fittest mentality which makes various members of the stranded group expendable in his eyes. Sands of Kalhari is a tense, well-paced survival movie that certainly works on a surface level, but where the film really excels is its underlying exploration of man's inherent animal-ism, juxtaposing a nearby pack of wild baboons behavior with that of the stranded group. The film captures how the extreme pressure of survival can impact any social group, with Sands of Kalhari using the character of O'brien as a device to exhibit the primal desire to survive no matter what moral shortcomings. In a way, O'brien is a character who sees his intellectualism stripped away by the threat of death, forced into a primal, barbarianism where everyone is expendable if it helps his chances. One of the other fascinating aspects of the film is the part the female character in the plays, a character who is essentially viewed as an object in the film by the other five stranded men. At first glance it's a film of its time period, having a very second-class citizen, object of seduction perspective on woman, but she serves an important purpose in Cy Enfield's larger commentary on the primal aspects of humanity. This female character falls head over heels for O'brien, sexually attracted to the most primal man of the group. This attraction blinds her to his actions yes, but one could argue these are merely her personal survival instincts, clinging to the strongest man of the group, the one that is her best chance of survival in this group, one that provide for her the longest in this desolate environment. When one takes a step back from the gripping story of one man slowly eliminating members of the group in order to survive, Sands of the Kalahari becomes almost allegorical, being a film that uses this story of survival as a reminder of humanities' primitive nature, touching on humanities relationship with nature and ourselves.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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