"Zeal is the inward fire of your soul that urges you onward toward your goal," Charles Fillmore has pointed out. When we boldly seek to stand by our commitments or channel our passion into actions which serve others, this can be a mighty virtue. But when selfish and rigid energy is used to forge one's own way, to harm others, and to fight to the end, zeal can be a toxic and dangerous passion. The latter version of zeal is demonstrated in Skin. This riveting drama, set in South Africa, shows how a person who sees himself as a crusader for justice can turn into a cruel tyrant willing to tear apart his family for the sake of his own ideas about the way things should be.
Ten-year-old Sandra (Ella Ramangwane) has been raised in relative isolation in a rural area by her father Abraham (Sam Neill), a shopkeeper, and her mother Sannie (Alice Kriege). Although her skin is brown, she has been told by her parents that she is white just like them. When they take her to an all-white girl's boarding school, the students and other parents are shocked to see a black person in their private preserve. The apartheid system classifies the population by race and insists that they be kept apart. Sandra is subjected to a lecture by a teacher on the differences between blacks and Afrikaners. The other students shun her, and the principal of the school beats her for speaking too softly in math class. After she is examined by state officials, Sandra is classified as colored and kicked out of the school.
Her highly idealistic father insists that she must be treated as white; he and her mother are white; her birth certificate says white. But the law says that race is determined by appearance. Garnering lots of press, he appeals her case all the way to the Supreme Court. There a geneticist argues that many Afrikaners have black blood in them, due to racial interaction over the long history of colonization. This news scandalizes others in the court. Eventually, Sandra's status reverts to white when the law is changed to make race determined by descent, not appearance.
Sandra (Sophie Okonedo), as a teenager, attends a convent school and at 17 is quite shy and inexperienced with men. Two dates arranged by her father are disasters. Abraham, who was so righteous in his search for justice in the beginning, is now firm in his belief that his daughter must marry a white man. But Sandra is attracted to a local black vegetable seller named Petrus (Tony Kgoroge) who seems to understand her. The two begin a secret affair. When her father finds out about it, he threatens to kill the young man if he ever sees him again on his property. Sandra is hauled off to prison for being with Petrus. When she is released, her father disowns her and she moves in with her lover to bear his child.
Skin offers a powerful study of the poisons of zeal. The film is based on a real life story. Sam Neill gives a fiery performance as the self-righteous, domineering, and bigoted Abraham. His motto is "Never give up!" signaling a kind of persistence that has disastrous effects upon his family. Alice Krige puts in a stellar performance as his nurturing and patient wife who must put up with his tirades, crusades, and rage. She is very close to Sandra and through the years wants to re-establish contact with her. But even when they do meet, the pressure from Abraham's views forces her to back away from her maternal instincts. The film vividly testifies to the awesome importance of familial intimacy in some and the hatred and refusal to love in others.
The closing chapter in this cinematic story of Sandra takes place on South Africa's first-day of racially nonexclusive free elections in 1994. She has had a difficult journey into adulthood and deserves our admiration for her resilience and stout-heartedness.
