History Buffs: Zulu

Hello and welcome

history

lovers, today we will watch a very special film that is very dear to my heart. One of my favorite African adventure films is a Zulu Boy based on the Battle of Rorke. This is the story of how only 150 British. The soldiers were besieged by 4,000 Zulu warriors deep in the heart of South Africa. It is an excellent example of classic cinema with epic battle scenes, stunning scenery and stellar performances, but the greatest achievement of the Zulus, in my opinion, was making the public admire the courage of both Britons. and the Zulus, no cheap tricks to demonize either side;

In fact, as a kid I was torn between who I wanted to root for, so aside from the obvious nostalgic affection you'll hear in this review, this was one of the first films that sparked my fascination with

history

, so it only seems right to watch both the movie and the real story behind the movie. This is Zulu, so the film is set in 1879 South Africa during British colonization. This was at an integral point in time where The British were getting closer and closer to conflict with the Zulus. There was an uneasy truce between the two empires and there was relative peace.

The British were able to continue their expansion into South Africa and the Zulu kingdom was allowed to continue its way of life. However, this truce. was tested when diamonds were discovered in the Kimberley, although only 800 miles away from Zulu land, the British began to reconsider their position. South Africa and its natural resources pressured by white settlers and the untapped wealth of Zulu land was inevitable amid increasing border clashes between the white settlers and the proud Zulu warriors a 13-term ultimatum was delivered to the Zulu king Quechua Oh In it a period of 20 days was given where the Zulus were required to disband their army and absorb the regiment system, the very way of life of the Zulus.

Now it depended on the closest way I can describe the Zulus is if you can imagine the ancient Spartans of Greece, it was a culture based on war, the regime system is a recruitment of all young people around 40 years old to constantly train for the army and swear allegiance to their king rather than a forced conscription it was a system of government that held a Zulu nation together when the 20 days were up and the Zulus refused to comply the British had the excuse they needed to invade at the head of 12,000 men It was the law. Charms, he and his men were confident of an easy victory over an enemy technologically, in theory, the only real problem he saw in this campaign was actually getting the Zulus to fight.

He had in mind that the Zulus would confront their forces with the guerrillas. tactics and avoid open battle, so he divided his forces and led most of his army towards Zulu lands, leaving the remaining 1,500 soldiers to camp at Sandal Wan at 8 a.m. m. The next morning, British explorers were patrolling a nearby valley and had inadvertently discovered the entire territory. The Zulu army, a force of 20,000 warriors prepared to attack the little ones in the camp, unprepared and overconfident, the British stood no chance and, despite all their superior firepower, were completely and absolutely annihilated. This was going to go down in history as the worst defeat. ever suffered by a modern army against a technologically inferior indigenous force.

What I especially love about this film is how it addresses the betrayal of the Zulus even though they are the antagonist. The film is not negative towards them, but actually makes a great effort to show the Zulus in a positive way but without being condescending whenever a character in the film says something that labels the Zulus as savages or makes a racist comment. any guy there is always a character around to put them in their place that you know about Julis group of savages, isn't that okay? How far can they run next March in one day?

Oh, 15 20 miles, is that right? The comrades of the Zulu Regiment can run about 50 miles and, like a battle at the end, they must now consider the time when this film was being made, the Civil Rights Act had not yet been passed and apartheid was at its worst moment in South Africa. With the political climate, it would have been easy to make a film where the Zulus were portrayed as savage barbarians attacking defenseless white people. we get a much deeper movie than that that is not biased and doesn't play favorites. The British are simply trying to survive and the Zulus are fighting for their homes.

There is no evil villain on either side and that allows the audience to sympathize. of the Zulus and the British, resulting in a much stronger film, we now move on to the part of the film where we finally meet our two main characters, one is the left hand man and John Char played by Stanley Baker and the other is the left hand in Brom. hair played by Michael Caine just like the Zulus, the British are not portrayed as more or less evil from their introduction, it is about their personalities, their motivations and how they handle the situation they have found themselves in and face annihilation, their motivations are simplicity at its finest all of you will be murdered like those this morning and now the sick in your beds all of you I don't think so mr.

Witt, the army doesn't like more than one disaster in a day, it looks bad in the newspapers and bothers civilians during their breakfast, apart from the upcoming battle. Bromhead and Chard have two very conflicting personalities. Bromhead was now a common rat who came from a prestigious army. Background in which many of his male family members were high-ranking officers, while Chard was a down-to-earth officer who preferred to work alongside his men and most likely rose through the ranks. They both have a set ideal of how an officer should behave. together I'll tell my man to clean his equipment, don't bother, don't bother, I'm not offering to clean it myself, still, a guy should look smart in front of men, don't you think?

But what I find interesting about Bromhead is that he seems to play the role of being a pompous officer almost to hide his own insecurities of being able to live up to his surname, you know my father was at Waterloo, he went, he got his colonel to say , after that, was it my great-grandfather? he was the Johnny that knelt next to Wolfe in Quebec, they make him a girl too, no you don't see what I'm driving at, you're telling me he has a professional eye on the ammeter, no, what I mean is, I mean . I wish right now our damn classified by hook or by crook isn't.

I am. You are an officer under the command of the general. He doesn't seem to really believe in himself once there's an imminent threat, but of all the characters in the film, his least ability to grow the façade of social status and the romantic notion of war is thrown out the window when They realize that only by working together can they survive, so when we see them coming together and working out their differences we get a real sense of how the perception of war has changed, so now, my favorite part of the movie, the battle. itself, and after much preparation, the film has already established how formidable the Zulu warriors are.

There is a real feeling: the British are simply waiting. for the Zulus to come and even more so when they can literally hear the Zulus marching towards them, very funny like her, like a train in the distance, even though every instinct tells them to run, they know that their best chance of survival is to make a standard fortified position rather than being vulnerable in the open field, so they wait and wait for a battle they cannot escape from and when the Zulus finally arrive you can see how almost hopeless the situation is for the British just by their large numbers to intimidate their enemies even more the Zulus placed psychological warfare by singing and breaking their shields now it is interesting to see the differences in their battle techniques compared to the British, obviously the British have an advantage with the use of weapons of projectiles.

I'll grant you that, but we already know that the Zulus defeated a much larger force and were armed with artillery cavalry and rockets. They did this with an ancient Sulu battle strategy called the horns, the Buffalo, which was introduced by Shaka Zulu right at the birth of the Zulu Kingdom. The way it worked was like this. They sent their strongest warriors in the center representing the head and loins of the buffalo, while the warriors on the left and right flanks with the horns when the center engaged, the enemy focused on defense without realizing the horns. that surrounded them, was this way of fighting.

That allowed the Zulus to conquer an entire empire, however, this does not mean that the British have no fighting chance as well. I mean, I know they have guns, but you have to consider the fact that there are only 150 of them and their rifles can only fire once before having to reload, so they used their fighting technique which also ensured them an empire. . This was called volley fire. The way it worked was that they usually spread out in three rows, the first row would open fire and then. reload, the second rank would do the same and the third and repeat, maintaining this they could unleash continuous fire on the enemy now despite a few times in the battle when the Zulus broke their lines before being repelled by the horns of the buffalo was on largely ineffective in Rorke drift;

It was better to use it in the open, but here the British have an outpost with defenses and barriers and the Zulus would find themselves in contained death zones where avenues of gunfire would inflict horrendous casualties after a whole day and on the night of the fight, The situation seems terrible. The completely exhausted British wait as the Zulus begin their final charge and so begins what is probably the most famous scene in the entire film when the Zulus start singing and the British just stare death in the face, but what happens? What I love here is that leftist John Chow looks at one of his men and says, "You think the world can do better than that, Helen." Well, they have a very good base section.

Mine, I know the top 10, that's for sure. The British start singing Men of Harlech in response to the Zulu chant and it almost becomes a chant. It's hard to describe, but it's absolutely beautiful how these two songs collide with each other like two strange worlds united in battle with the use of vocals. finally the Zulus charge and as our characters make their last stand we witnessed the true destructive power of the volley fire system after the battle, the British almost looked traumatized and I really appreciate how we don't see any tears of victory, they just looked relieved.

They've even survived, so you feel the weight and their shoulders for going through something so horrible. There's definitely an anti-war sentiment here and the film doesn't revel in ideas of glory; It only tells what happened in the conflict both the Zulus and the British went through, in reality we see the characters tormented by what they have just witnessed and question that there are moral values, does everyone feel that way afterwards? How do you feel sick? Well, you have to be alive if you're sick. If you ask me, I told you so. There's something else I'm ashamed of is that since it was for you the first time, I think I could endure this butcher's yard more than once, even after all this destruction, the Zulus return one last time and appear on the hill that dominates the outpost.

Then they start singing again and since throughout the entire film we have seen a Zulu singing in charge, we hope they do it again. The British, now on their last legs, expect to be annihilated and Bromhead simply says: what are you waiting for, come on, come on. but the film takes an unexpected turn because the Zulus actually applaud the British for their bravery and recognize them as worthy warriors. They greet you, they greet your brave companions. It is at this point that both parties develop a mutual respect for each other. another and this is something I haven't seen in many films, although the Zulus and the British are polar opposites, they both recognize the courage it takes to go into battle and overcome the fear that no matter where you are from, they are these. qualities that all soldiers can relate to now, as much as I obviously love the Zulus in the film, there are a number of historical inaccuracies that I need to address, for example when the Zulus salute the British, something that never actually happened .

It's a great scene, but nothing is written. To suggest that it actually took place, the Zulus appeared one last time, but were probably overlooking the British aid column rushing through the rocks before they finally left. Another thing is that they did not withdraw out of respect,They were treated because they were not. Firstly, he was not supposed to attack Rorke's drift, in fact Kinkajou gave him specific orders not to attack the British. He had won an important battle at Isan DeWanna and was able to make his case that he was simply defending King's homeland in the film we see.

Quechua at the wedding ceremony giving the order to leave the land and attack the British which completely contradicts what he really wanted and which was to force the British to renegotiate by attacking rocks that they stumbled upon he could be seen as an aggressor which was The last thing he wanted and was unfortunately the exact excuse the British needed to re-invade Zulu land was the defeat at Santa Claus. The British lost because they underestimated the Zulus. The Zulus lost to Rorke's drift because they underestimated the British and eventually when the British start chanting men from Harlech back to the Zulus, that didn't really happen either, but I personally feel that this change brought an extra sense of passion and energy to that scene that, despite all these historical inaccuracies, don't hinder the film too much and in fact I think add more to it.

To the drama and conflict that is occurring because none of the changes are insulting, the core of the film remains true to the true story and that is why I think this film succeeds where so many other historical films fail. That's all , my name is Nick Hodges and thanks for watching history

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and remember if you like the show help the channel grow don't forget to hit the like button and subscribe and let me know what you think about Zulu and Por Of course, which historical movie should I check out next until then. See you next time.

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