The Shack: Avant-garde panorama of our time

The Shack is the content I’ve been searching for in the midst of the mess South Africa is currently in. It’s seven minutes of erudite storytelling. Wait for it… from the perspective of e Mpantshi!

Mpantshi yona, the shack itself (emphasis, not translation) tells the story of its unseen owner whom you can hardly help but fall in love with, from the intensely warm love this shack holds for the never-onscreen man. I want to start with the inventiveness of the choice in filmic storytelling before I touch on how the brief, but full story, has continued to stay with me.

The Shack is shot in panorama. This mode gives a wide, seamless view of the subject. This frame of reference is a slick choice by film-maker Tebogo Chologi. The weaving of form and content is masterful. The panorama allows us to get a broad view of the shack as a landscape and the shack itself narrates the film, so that the shack becomes a subject and not a mere object. It is Mpantshi. Using its colloquial term to self-define itself, the mpantshi becomes a character from e kasi. It speaks a language recognisable to those who know it. This use of language and subtitles is significant. The audience is being made aware of its proximity or distance from this location or township. But even more exciting, is the fact this film does not give us a story from above. This is not a birds-eye or god’s-eye saviour view, it is intimate with the ways a person from this world simply keeps on going. The shack itself is brought alive for us, made human for us, so we can learn how distant we have become from the people who occupy shacks in this country. This distance is brought close to us by making the person whom the shack speaks of absent. We fall in love with a person we cannot see. And we can only question why the image of the poor person needs to be invisible in order for us to care by the mpantshi’s proxy.

The shack tells us- in a digression from its narrative about Buti, the owner- how it wonders what it would be like if people heard the stories of what shacks have seen. This detail is so delicious. The shack goes on to laugh about how funny it would be to have people flock to hear the stories of shacks, imagine people “caucusing” at a meeting around a shack! Of course, the pointed nature of this throw-away type thought is apt. We never stop to listen to stories from the shacks, only gawk and gape at the visuals of people looting and so on and so forth.

But, back to the story, as Mpanthsi tells it:

Mpantshi is proud to be speaking on behalf of other mpantshis. Mpanthsi’s owner is Buti, and as the film moves in a gentle pan across the shack, for its entire 7 minutes, you are given a textured portrait of the absent owner. Buti and the mpantshi are intimately connected. That we see Buti through the shack is itself a mechanising of our complicit gaze in the maintenance of Buti’s place in the world. It is also an incredibly poignant picture, in high-definition, crystal-clear imagery, that Buti’s story is seen through his absence. Mpanthsi tells us how Buti is always working but doesn’t have a payslip or child or girlfriend in his life. All he has is the shack. Mpanthsi mourns that Buti doesn’t have time to rest and so, of course, how could he even have the warmth of a companion beyond the metal home he’s built.

And oh, the mpantshi, is a space of gaps and patches. The sharpness of the camera’s focus whilst never being still is also an evocative restlessness. The panorama works at multiple levels. It is as though we cannot sit here. We are guests. We will never know what Buti’s life is like unless we live it. The camera pans slowly, but not mournfully over Buti’s basin for all water-related tasks of living. It moves over the image of his overused beanie. It almost pauses for a while, looking up at the image of Buti’s “The Ten Commandments of Love” hanging like biblical pieces of art do in so many poverty-stricken homes. The tenth commandment says: “Remember to pray to God. He will solve any”…(and the word “problems” is windingly faded out).

It is gutting to hear Mpantshi talk about one of Buti’s worst days. Recently, the mpantshi tells us, Buti prayed to God and asked why some people are rich without working when he has to suffer through the fear of death more acutely now, with the Corona Virus. The soft pan of the camera moves over the corners of the shack and its plastic bag-stuffed corners. Stuffed to keep the cold seeping through the holes of this home. When Mpantshi utters his wish, that he could just protect Buti from the virus, it is deeply affective. The shack worries about Buti always, when he is not there… And he is obviously constantly out, labouring. Mpantshi prays to be able to somehow protect Buti from the virus, because what else can a shack do for its owner, who cannot afford sanitiser?

The fact the film closes with a reminder for us, from the shack, to “stay safe and sanitise” ourselves against Corona, leaves me with a knot, a well of tears in my navel.

The Shack is a thrillingly artistic film for our time.

The Shack can be watched on the virtual National Arts Festival Fringe programme until 31 July.

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Director: Tebogo Chologi
Starring: Tebogo Chologi