The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
Director:
Jamie Uys
Tagline:
« The critics are raving… the natives are restless… and the laughter is non-stop! »
Actors:
Andrew Steyn
Kate Thompson
Xi
Sam Boga
Mpudi
Rating:
(63’393 votes)
(63’393 votes)
Quotes:
« Narrator: Only 600 miles to the south, there's a vast city. And here you find civilized man. Civilized man refused to adapt himself to his environment; instead, he adapted his environment to suit him. So he built cities, roads, vehicles, machinery, and he put up power lines to run his labour-saving devices. But somehow he didn't know where to stop. The more he improved his surroundings to make life easier, the more complicated he made it. So now his children are sentenced to 10-15 years of school, just to learn how to survive in this complex and hazardous habitat they were born into. And civilized man, who refused to adapt to his surroundings, now finds he has to adapt and re-adapt every hour of the day to his self-created environment. For instance, if it's Monday and 7:30 comes up, you have to dis-adapt from your domestic surroundings and re-adapt yourself to an entirely different environment. 8:00 means everybody has to look busy… 10:30 says you can stop looking busy for 15 minutes. And then you have to look busy again… And so your day is chopped into pieces, and in each segment of time you adapt to a new set circumstances.
»
« Narrator: [Kate looks for a place to have her lunch] My I share a table?
»
« Kate Thompson: No wonder some people go off the rails a bit…
»
« Young woman with noise in her head: Does the noise in my head bother you?
»
« Young woman with noise in her head: No…
»
« Kate Thompson: [Later, Kate finds Pete] Pete, Have you still got that story about the teacher shortage in Botswana?
»
« Pete: Yeah, you gonna use it?
»
« Kate Thompson: No. Maybe they can use me.
»
« Narrator: But in the Kalahari, it's always Tuesday, or Thursday if you like, or Sunday. No clocks or calendars tell you to do this or that.
»
« Narrator: The rhino is the self appointed fire prevention officer. When he sees a fire, he rushes in and stamps it out.
»
« Mpudi: [looking at Steyn in a suit] And why are you so beautiful?
»
« Steyn: I'm going to the school to give her these.
»
« Mpudi: You gonna look like that?
»
« Steyn: Like what?
»
« Mpudi: Like it's a funeral. You've gotta smile, man, and tell her she looks good.
»
« Steyn: How come suddenly you're an expert on women?
»
« Mpudi: I got seven wives. How many you got?
»
« Steyn: So why aren't you at home with your seven wives?
»
« Mpudi: I know how to marry them. Nobody knows how to live with them.
»
« Steyn: So, what did you marry them for?
»
« Mpudi: Someday I have to tell you the facts of life…
»
Trailer:
Trailer
Runtime:109 minutes
Plots:
A comic allegory about a traveling Bushman who encounters modern civilization and its stranger aspects, including a clumsy scientist and a band of revolutionaries.
A Bushman in the Kalahari desert encounters technology for the first time–in the shape of a Coke bottle. He takes it back to his people, and they use it for many tasks. The people start to fight over it, so he decides to return it to the Gods–where he thinks it came from. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a clumsy biologist, a schoolteacher assigned to a small village, and a despotic revolutionary.
Misery is brought to a small group of Bushmen in the Kalahari desert in the form of a Coca-Cola bottle. In his quest to throw the evil object over the edge of the earth, Xi encounters Western “civilization”, a biologist, a schoolteacher and a tyrannical despot.

