Why It's Alright And Not Alt-Right To Love Zulu

In which I get on my high horse and ride to Sir Michael Caine's rescue.

I’m not often moved to write by recent events. However, after Sir Michael Caine dismissed claims that his breakthrough movie Zulu is used as a far-right recruiting tool, only for a number of people to step up and say that they can see why that might be the case, I thought it only right that I should straddle my high horse - whoa, Lavender! - and ride to the great man’s aid.

Looking at the criticisms levelled against Zulu this week, most concern the fact that the film is widely inaccurate. And it is. No, no herd of cows ever came to the aid of Stanley Baker and his brave band, nor for that matter did the Zulus return the morning after to celebrate their fellow braves - rather they were looking to see whether the British relief column was closing in on Rorke’s Drift which it was. There was also no rendition of ‘Men Of Harlech’, no drunken Swedish missionary (sorry, Jack), and far from the slovenly soldier portrayed by James Booth, Private Henry Hook was an abstemious man of high character.

There’s lots of other oversights and examples of poetic license I could point to. It’s the suggestion these changes were made to promote the bravery of the British colonials in the face of savage hordes that doesn’t ring true. For when the journalist John Prebble decided to profile these events, it was as part of a series of features on the courage of people in conflict. And in the case of Rorke’s Drift, this meant championing those who wielded assegais as well as those packing Martini-Henry rifles.

Yes, the very fact Zulu got made in the manner it did - on location in South Africa with the full cooperation of the Zulu - was because Prebble had been so determined to paint the ‘enemy’ in a good light. As for just how much the Zulus welcomed this approach, look no further than the fact that Cetewayo (aka Cetshwayo), the king of the Zulus at the time of the attack, is played by Mangosuthu Buthelezi, then Chief of the Zulus and Cetshwayo’s real-life great-great-grandson.

From writer-director Cy Enfield’s desire to capture native customs on film to the acknowledgement of Cetewayo’s tactical expertise, the picture depicts the Zulus in a manner far removed from the way Africans had been previously depicted on film. And as to emphasise that this isn’t a film obsessed with celebrating the white man’s conquest of the Dark Continent, check out this exchange between Boer adviser and Isandlwana survivor Gert Adendorff (Gert van den Berg) and the fey Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (played by Michael Caine):

Bromhead: Damn the levies, man... More cowardly blacks...

Adendorff: What the hell do you mean ‘cowardly blacks’? They died on your side, didn't they? And who the hell do you think is coming to wipe out your little command? The Grenadier Guards?

And even in the 24th Regiment Of Foot’s hour of triumph, Cy Enfield doesn’t overlook the fact that their victory had less to do with providence than firepower. Cue Stanley Baker’s battle-weary Lieutenant John Chard and Colour Sergeant Bourne, played by the inimitable Nigel Green:

Colour Sergeant Bourne: It's a miracle.

Lieutenant John Chard: If it's a miracle, Colour Sergeant, it's a short chamber Boxer Henry point 45 caliber miracle.

Colour Sergeant Bourne: And a bayonet, sir, with some guts behind.

Of course, it’s impossible to know what influence is taken from which work of art. For example, when Gillo Pontecorvo made The Battle Of Algiers, the fact it would go down a storm with the Black Panthers would’ve been the last thing on his mind.

Let us end, though, by addressing another of the recently expressed criticisms that doesn’t hold water, namely that Zulu doesn’t put the attack in context, this being a conclusion one can only reach if you don’t watch the film’s opening in which the camera pans over the routed British forces at Isandlwana while said context is provided by Richard Burton:

Narrator: The Secretary of State for War received the following dispatch from Lord Chelmsford, Commander-in-Chief of Her Majesty's forces in Natal, South Africa. "I regret to report a disatrous engement which took place on the morning of the 22nd of January between the armies of the Zulu king Cetewayo and our Number 3 Column, consisting of Five Companies of the 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, and one company of the 2nd Battalion, a total of nearly 1,500 men, officers and other ranks… The Zulus, in overwhemling numbers, launched a highly disciplined attack on the slopes of the mountain Isandlwana, and in spite of gallant resistance..."

The massacre at Isandlwana (or as it’s sometimes spelt ‘Isandhlwana’) would of course form the basis of Douglas Hickox’s Zulu Dawn (1979). That film has never been celebrated to the same extent as Zulu, in large part because it is a downbeat account of epic military failure. What it does, however, is to cement something that ought to be gleaned from Burton’s narration; that, in the wake of Isandlwana, the defence of Rorke’s Drift was a very small success. It certainly didn’t make up for the 1,800+ servicemen and native bearers who’d died earlier that day.

No, what happened at Rorke’s Drift was a demonstration of courage - the courage of men without arms confronting men who, though never outgunned, were vastly outnumbered. And if bravery is to become the preserve of the far-right, then we really will be in need of a miracle…