As my mind goes, I hope one of the memories I keep is of the day Nelson Mandela was released from his South African prison.
It was such a powerful moment in history; a time when an elegant and noble man embodied a nation on the verge of becoming greater.
"Endgame" (UNC-TV, 9 tonight) explores the work that lead to that moment. It dramatizes the secret talks between ANC leaders and Afrikaners as they moved toward a peaceful resolution to the end of apartheid.
The movies begins with Michael Young (Jonny Lee Miller of "Eli Stone) who is the public affairs person for a gold company that aims to set up the talks. Naturally, being the rep from a gold company and all, he's driven as much by reasons of commerce as good intentions. Civil war would be bad for business.
Recruiting people to come to the meetings isn't easy. He's turned down a lot by folks terrified by the governmental response if their participation is revealed. Those fears aren't exaggerated; what he's asking is check-under-your-car dangerous. Many people don't want the talks -- those in power (for obvious reasons), and those within the ANC who believe that the talks represent nothing but compromise.
Young finally gets, among others, Prof. Will Esterhuyse (William Hurt) to attend, and the ANC's Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor); the movie pretty much is about their engagement. The two need to get over their fears and learn to trust each other.
The efforts to undermine that process include the work of Niel Barnard (Mark Strong) an intelligence director who is working on behalf of South African PW Botha to compromise Mandela (Clarke Peters from "The Wire"), while he's in prison.
It would seem the film's big challenge might be to represent both sides fairly. After all the white South Africans are the oppressors, and oppression is bad. But Hurt's nuanced performance manages to imbue his character with sympathy. Afrikaners, he says at one point, are terrified by "the deep-rooted knowledge that one day we will be punished for all the terrible wrongs we have inflicted."
Still, the film falters in two ways. One, you don't see enough of the content of the talks to see their full power. It could be that the work part wasn't all the interesting.
The scenes with Mandela drag too. His story has been told in other films, and you can't really leave him out. But underplaying him when you are including such a mythic figure leaves the viewer wanting more of his thoughts and feelings, which then takes force away from the rest of the film.
Still, it's worth watching. Hurt and Ejiofor give especially good performances; Strong too. And even though you pretty much know how it ends, it's inspiring to remember what South Africa was and what, through the will of its leaders, it became.
As the movie's tag line says, the film reminds us that when we acknowledge our mutual humanity, peace is possible.
Assistant Features Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin would like to have her life turned into an animated cartoon. 
