E-Mail This Article to a Friend IN MY COUNTRY

" ‘Blood the color of earth, earth the color of blood,’ " a woman says at the beginning of In My Country, apologizing for not having finished the latest book by poet Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche). "I’m afraid you lost me there." Me too. I haven’t read any of Antjie Krog’s books, including Country of My Skull, the memoir this film is based on, but to judge from her representation here, she seems earnest and banal. An Afrikaner from a landed family, the guilt-ridden Anna attends the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Hearings as a radio journalist. There she encounters pissy Washington Post journalist Langston (named after his favorite poet) Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson), who thinks all the whites in South Africa are responsible and should be punished. Can these two opposites be reconciled? And what about Anna’s husband and three kids? Meanwhile, snippets of testimony about electric torture and rape pass the time. I have no doubt John Boorman, who’s capable of brilliance (Deliverance; Hope and Glory), is totally earnest himself about this subject, but I don’t think his heart was in this Country. In English and Afrikaans with English subtitles. (104 minutes)