The Quarry

The Quarry is the second film by Marion Hänsel situated in South Africa, following Dust from 1984, a drama about the influence of apartheid on a family. The Quarry is a moral detective thriller set in the countryside. Mandela may be in power, but the old ailments of the apartheid society live on here more than in the big city. This wonderfully acted film opens with beautiful shots of a cornfield with a white boy, obviously running for his life. This boy kills a frustrated gay preacher and manages to take his place. His first sermon is about the bible text ‘I have known suffering’ from Jeremiah. But the murderer’s background remains puzzling. The murder is however not without consequences: A white policeman arrests several blacks who grow marijuana (for personal consumption, supposedly) and therefore have to be guilty. The murderer’s conscience suffers.The beautiful expanses of arid landscape in which the film was made (in Cinemascope), give it a western feel. At the same time, Hänsel uses the classic Hitchcock idiom of the guilty innocents and the runaway for her universal quest for integrity in a paranoid society. The film is also an indictment of the continuing hypocrisy of which the blacks are always the first victims.