Product Description

Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 11/05/2002 Run time: 500 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5612 in DVD
• Brand: A&E
• Released on: 2002-10-29
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 500 minutes

Amazon.com
This sweeping miniseries from 1986 captures the rise and fall of an African emperor. Shaka Zulu begins following a British expedition sent to bargain with the fearsome Zulu army assembling on the outer edges of the British colonies in South Africa. Led by Lt. Francis Farewell (The Day of the Jackal, A Bridge Too Far), the expedition hopes to bamboozle a superstitious primitive, but their arrogance gets taken down a notch by a cunning and ruthless warlord who has unified vast territories through a combination of political charisma and military discipline. At this point, the focus shifts to how Shaka (the riveting Henry Cele), king of the Zulus, rose from a brutal childhood to royal grandeur--a semi-mythological tale filled with family strife, political intrigue, witchcraft, and bloody warfare. Powerful performances by Cele and Dudu Mikhize (as Shaka's iron-willed mother, Nandi) give this sprawling epic the drive and emotional scope of a Shakespearean drama. Shaka Zulu also draws sneaky parallels between the Zulu and British empires, often to sharp satirical effect. Full of richly conceived characters and compelling political maneuvering, this eight-hour series brings faraway history to living, breathing life. Also featuring Christopher Lee (whose always-steady career exploded at age 79 with juicy roles in The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones). --Bret Fetzer

From the Back Cover
The complete, acclaimed miniseries available on DVD for the first time! He was an illegitimate prince who reclaimed his birthright with brilliance and brutality. He created a vast new nation from warring tribes and forged an army that defied the most powerful empire on earth. He was Shaka Zulu.

Brought to life in an epic, 10-part production, the story of the legendary, 19th-century African king became one of the most compelling and controversial miniseries in television history. From his boyhood in exile to the bloody struggles that solidified his rule and his proud defiance of British colonists, SHAKA ZULU is the unforgettable tale of a man who stood at the heart of a battle between two worlds. Filmed entirely on location in South Africa, SHAKA ZULU stars Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars Episode II), Edward Fox (The Dresser, Gandhi), and Henry Cele as Shaka. Approx. 8 hours.

Customer Reviews

Amazing Story, Production
One of the best movies/series I have ever seen; the story is epic and well-told, and the acting and cinematography are fantastic.

What I liked best was the ambivalent nature of all of the main characters, not the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs typically encountered in movies (and series). Shaka, while certainly a great leader, warrior, and king, is also certainly an utterly ruthless, blood-stained tyrant; this production does an amazing job of illustrating these and other facets of the man. As other reviewers note, Henry Cele was just amazing in this role.

The English characters were also portrayed well; the leader, Lt. Farewell, is depicted as a well-intentioned rogue seeking ivory, but ultimately his relationship with Shaka changes him. Normally he might not be a very sympathetic character, but compared to the British colonial officials in Capetown, he is practically a paragon of wisdom and virtue. The Scottish doctor meanwhile attempts with rather limited success to school Shaka in the tenents of the Christian faith--Shaka has a way of turning all of the doctor's earnest efforts completely backwards.

Finally, a comment about the large portion of the series devoted to Shaka's birth and childhood--it is Shakespeare and Greek tragedy rolled into one--prophecies, witchcraft, parricide, regicide, vengeance, love, war, etc. Very very interesting.

Quite rewarding!
When Nandi and her unborn child are saved by the ancient witch doctor, he proclaims: "A force has been generated that in time will rock the foundation of the African sub-continent."

Indeed the prophecy shaped the event and Shaka was the ruthless founder of southern Africa's Zulu Empire... In less than a decade, the paramount chieftain of the Zulu clan revolutionized the techniques of tribal warfare and fashioned an efficient and terrifying fighting force that devastated the entire region...

Set against the emergence of British power in Africa during the early 19th Century, the film provides some valuable insights into comparative cultures...

Shaka (Henry Cele) is a man of considerable height, thin, with athletic body and white teeth who can read and write... He is a great warrior, tactically, strategically and physically... He rearms his army with a long-bladed, short-shafted stabbing spear, which forced them to fight at close quarters... He goes for extermination, incorporating the remnants of the clans he smashed into the Zulu, making it increase with numbers and power..

The Mini-Series begins with a letter to the British king (George IV) regarding the Zulus' potential threat to the Cape Colony... In an attempt to intimidate Shaka into an alliance with the British empire, the Secretary of War sends a delegation to inner African to meet with the fearful warrior...

We see :

- The meeting of Nandi, an orphaned princess of the neighboring Langeni clan and Senzangakona, the chief of the then small Zulu tribe... They are instantly attracted to each other... Nandi becomes pregnant, at the same time as Kona's wife, but the marriage did not last... Their marriage violated Zulu custom, and the stigma of this extended to the child...

- The couple separated when Shaka was six, and Nandi took her son back to the Langeni, where he passed a fatherless boyhood among a people who despised his mother and made him the butt of endless cruel pranks... He grew up to be bitter and angry, hating his tormentors... The Langeni drove Nandi out, and she finally found shelter with the Dletsheni, a subclan of the powerful Mtetwa...

- Shaka ruled with an iron hand from the beginning, distributing instant death for the slightest opposition...

- While en route to Shaka's capital, the crew's doctor saves a girl who is in a coma and nearly buried alive by her tribe... Impressed by both the deed and their horses, Shaka agrees to meet with the crew... And so begins the clash of two cultures, two different worlds...

- Shaka, seriously wounded for saving an unknown warrior (King Dingiswayo), is nursed to health by a beautiful Mtwetwa girl...

- Shaka, believing in total annihilation, joins the Mtwetwa army and creates a dangerous weapon for the African warfare...

- Shaka grants Port Natal, with its ivory rights, to the British crew after he is saved by the crew's doctor from an assassination attempt...

- Shaka's mighty army saving the British delegation in a battle against thousands of Ndwandwe warriors... To test the alliance and allegiance of the British delegation, Shaka orders them into battle alone against the Ndwandwe warriors...

- With his mother's death Shaka becomes openly psychotic... Thousands are killed in the initial paroxysm of his grief...

- Shaka rules by the sheer force of his personality, building, by scores of daily executions, a fear so profound that he could afford to ignore it...

Set against the spectacular panorama of the Zulu tribal homelands, and with graphic violence and frequent nudity, "Shaka Zulu" is a tremendous epic Mini-Series, chronicling the rise and fall of one of the most famous South Africans who has already passed into legend...

Excellent but incomplete.
"Shaka Zulu" is dramatically effective. It's downright addictive. I watched the entire 500-minute series in a single day, because I just couldn't stop. (I actually watched most of it in a single sitting, but had to deal with a couple of interruptions near the beginning and the end.)

On that basis, I have no choice but to award it five stars.

Still, I must note a significant omission.

The series follows Shaka through his early life, his rise to power, personal issues he dealt with during the time he was king, his madness, and finally his death.

What is glaringly absent is any in-depth portrayal of the kind of king he was before he went mad. My knowledge of Shaka was quite limited before viewing this miniseries, but I knew that he had made changes to the Zulu economy, judicial system (if it can be called that), and other aspects of Zulu life. I was really hoping to learn more about this. What did he do in his role as king? In what ways did he affect the lives of his subjects? Were they better off or worse off? The kind of king he was says something about the kind of man he was, so this is an important part of his story, and I wish the miniseries had delved into it.

Despite that unfortunate omission, I can't help but award the series five stars.