breeders for
a lost cause
by Douglas Messerli
Etienne Kallos (screenwriter and director)
Die Stropers (The Harvesters) / 2018
As Wikipedia observes, this film
grew out of director Etienne Kalos’ “desire to explore adolescence through the
lens of the of the first generation to be born outside of the apartheid system
since it ended in 1995.” Using the award money he received from his Golden Lion,
won at the Venice Film Festival for his film Firstborn, Kalas visited the
remote Eastern Free State region of the country encountering and observing farm
families there.
The
world Kallos’ discovers, or at least reveals in his film, is still a highly
insular, closed-off and racist society that attempts to pray away all evils and
threats, including the increasing mysterious murder of local Afrikaner farmers,
and a rapidly dwindling population as the younger realize how, as one of the
central figures describes both the elders and youngers as all being in this
film, “brainwashed.” In many senses, they are as closed off from the real world
of South Africa, using only a few blacks as servants or farm helpers, but
basically remaining apart, as the US orders of the Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites,
and others.
Yet there is little time for enjoyment, even for the young. Janno (Brent
Vermeulen), the only son of the family with 4 younger sisters. He is the heir
apparent of this brutal world, yet unlike his forthright, endlessly working
father and perhaps the now dementia driven but quite still aware grandfather
who created their estate, Janno seems somehow different, secretive and frail
despite the fact that each day he takes up a whip to prod the cattle back into
the fields where they can graze. He cracks his whip authoritatively as he moves
on foot, but is careful it never touches a cow, while his father and others on
horses prod the cattle further into the fields. When he isn’t engaged in that
task, he takes care of the eggs, putting them in a warmed protective “oven” to
make sure they properly hatch, or at threshing time gets on a huge thresher whose
blades gather the corn several rows at a time. Only occasionally, does he steal
away to play rugby with the local boys, but even there is sometimes mocked,
comforted only by Hennie, a boy a year or two ahead of him
Variety reviewer Guy Lodge nicely summarizes the world of the
Afrikaners:
“It says much about the out-of-time
nature of life in the Bible belt of South Africa’s central Free State province
— a flat expanse of scrubby yellow plains and maize fields, a million miles and
yet not a million miles from the American Midwest — that it’s initially hard to
tell what period Kallos’ film is even set in. Only once a cellphone appears in
this rigorously visualized world of dateless khakiwear and ascetic midcentury
furnishings can we tell for sure that we’re not still in the apartheid era, when
white Afrikaans families like the one portrayed here were most prioritized and
protected by ruling politicians. Now, nearly a quarter-century into the
country’s rocky democracy, they seem quaint relics of a dark past, endangered
by the very insularity of their community and, more directly, a drastic uptick
in farm murders across the country. If not necessarily as racially driven as
the infamous “kill the boer, kill the farmer” campaign of decades past, it’s a
clear and rising threat, awareness of which young matriarch Marie (a superb
Juliana Venter) drums into her young children with startling bluntness.”
In short, this is a world in which the men and women have to be
extremely hard in order to survive, something which it is quite apparent Janno
is not. His mother goes out into the fields to pray for the strength to help her
son to be strong, for his blood and seed. But one day she brings home another
boy about Janno’s age of 15, brings home Pieter (Alex van Dyk), a tough street
kid the authorities have found near-dying on the street of a larger city, still
suffering from the remnants of drug-addiction.
One might imagine her decision to represent a humane and kind act, taking
in a young street thug to help him realize that he too is loved, but her real
purposes, it soon becomes clear, are anything but kind and pure. At first, she
clearly reveals a gentle and caring behavior, helping him get over his drug
pains by late night ministering, much against her husband’s complaints, and her
seemingly gentle prodding him into the family routine of dinners and prayers.
But, despite the fact that Pieter’s mother had abandoned him age 2, his new
mother has made certain that he is of Dutch Afrikaans birth.
She invites Janno to more or less take him under his wing and help him,
but if you think, as you might, that the new boy in his home might result in
new bonds, the opposite immediately begins to happen. Janno begins to have
dreams where he friend Janno comes into his bedroom to protect him, also an
erotic dream to be sure, but one which greatly troubles the devout young boer.
When after several episodes of nightmares, Pieter sets up a futon at the foot
of Janno’s own bed, he further alienated from the fast-talking young man,
dismissive of all he has been taught and trying to obey and engage in for
years.
Pieter’s rough background is immediately recognized by the other boys of
the community, now associating Janno more or less with the newcomer’s taunting
behavior, and will longer have anything to do with Janno. What poor Janno also
doesn’t realize is that they have grown older, Hennie is now interested in a girl,
and along with the other boys, never truly Janno’s “friends,” begin to
recognize their former acquaintance as perhaps having gay tendencies, even if
he himself cannot imagine such a thing.
Worst of all, Pieter now takes up most of his mother’s attentions, Janno
watching her sharing private jokes and statements with him.
So immersed in his own culture is Janno, that it takes him longer than usual— which creates a great deal of frustration in the viewer as the focus of the film remains in the barren and quite boring day-to-day world of religious farm life—before Janno begins to realize that some of Pieter’s accusations about their world may be correct.
Meanwhile,
the new boy refuses to attend their church, and one night insists Janno
accompany him on a night voyage worthy of any underworld, where he takes him to
the vibrant black and Asian city few in the Afrikaans world probably even know
exists. There Pieter picks up a girl, and Janno soon discovers that it is also
a world of intense dancing and backrooms of lust and love. Having lost touch
with Pieter, Janno gets sick from his first bout with alcohol and vomits. But soon
after, he again spots his “brother,” secretly following Pieter, whereupon he
observes him with two older men with the boy as he negotiates himself into
prostitution: selling his young body at 300 for anything above the belt, 600
for anything below the belt, before watching him get into their car and drive
off. It’s now clear to him that Pieter survived his years in the city.
We soon see the father and mother visiting the local jail where Pieter
is now locked-up, having been arrested. He is freed to them, but his recalcitrant
behavior now results in the father’s decision to send him off to “man camp.”
Janno attempts to warn him of their violence there, and suggests he doesn’t
mention that he willingness got into the car with the men.
Pieter almost willing packs up, taking it almost as a challenge. once
more he counters Janno, suggesting he still hasn’t a clue who he is and insisting,
“At least I know who I am.” When Janno asks what, he answers it in two simple
and quite devastating words: “White meat.”
If we’re not quite sure what he means, when he returns to from his
ordeal all is made clear.
Anyone who has read my essays know that I also treat these films as
historical documents, readily revealing the entire plots of all films, if
nothing else, just for the record knowing that so many LGBTQ+ works over the decades
have been lost or never come to be shown again. But this time I enter territory
no other critic that I know of has yet taken, and suggest for those who cannot
watch a film if they have heard to plot ahead of time, that they pause, and
attempt to track down a copy of The Harvesters, before returning to my
essay.
Pieter comes back from “man camp” with permanent whip scars of his back
awarded him, with the local pastor’s blessings, by the man whom Pieter
describes as Janno’s “boyfriend,” Hennie. But he also comes back with an even
more horrible knowledge than we might ever have imagined.
Janno’s mother, so he has been told, is totally barren, and all of her
children are adopted, Janno and his sisters. She has chosen to add Pieter to
their family, it becomes clear, because he is tough, he does have the strength
to sustain and the correct sexual orientation to continue their line. Pieter
attempts to explain to Janno that, like himself, he recognizes her for being
utterly cold inside. Their upbringing has never been a matter of love, but of
continuation of a family heir with a young person strong enough to take over
the work of such an absurd effort. Pieter now behaves quite reasonably among
his adoptive parents knowing that he is the heir apparent, no longer Janno.
When Janno attempts to take his case to his mother, she gently assures
him that she loves both her sons, while also pushing any love from him away.
And we realize for the first time, children in this world are not borne for
coddling but for breeding, for the continuation of their dying world.
Suddenly, a fire breaks out in the field, everyone rushing out with the
brooms and rakes, the only tools in such a distant field available to put out
such a fire. While attempting to douse the flames, she witnesses, seemingly in
the midst of the fires, Janno, as does Pieter.
He attempts to chase down Janno, begging him not to leave him alone with
such terrible people, but he can no longer spot him, and we no longer know
whether Janno, having himself set the fire, has run off or been consumed by it himself.
This remarkable and quite horrific film ends with Pieter sitting in
Janno’s favorite seat, praying with the family and helping the other children
in getting served, as did Janno, before he serves himself, smiling some like demon son in the horror film The Omen (1976). He has become the
perfect son.
Los Angeles, October 24, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).
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