God's Work can often be cruel

Durban-based director Michael James’ debut feature God’s Work is a thought-provoking, multilayered reflection on the lived experience and inner world of the city’s marginalised and misunderstood unhoused people. Combining elements of social realism, this meta narrative is an attempt by a well-intentioned young white documentary filmmaker to tell their story. It's a sharp satirical critique of the politically expedient attempts to co-opt them into the platforms of fictionalised versions of the DA and the EFF, and includes surreal hallucinations brought on by the effects of drugs and the traumas of the past, as well as the oppressive violence of the city’s corrupt police. The film follows the journey of a group of unhoused young men as they hustle each day to survive in an environment in which the elements seem intent on erasing them. It also provides a complex interrogation of how we interact with sidelined members of our communities and what the abilities and limits of cinema as a medium are to adequately capture the many aspects of the realities of their lives.

What was the genesis of the film?

Michael James: Lockdown 2020 was a catalysing moment for a lot of questions I'd been asking for years about the role of cinema in relation to society and the presence of the filmmaker in relation to subjects. When Covid happened, I was invited to cover some of the work being done for the unhoused community. It was during lockdown and municipalities had split these people up into three different camps; one of them was at the Denis Hurley Center in the CBD of Durban. I started going there frequently to cover the story that was happening there. During that time, I met a group of guys who introduced themselves to me as filmmakers. It was an interesting encounter because it resulted in me abandoning my other duties and going back to the Hurley Center two, three times a week. That's how I spent my lockdown. I did script workshops which resulted in these guys crafting some of their own work. I’d just watched Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine around that time and it all coalesced into a moment of me manically sitting down to write the first draft of the story over five days.

Mbulelo Radebe and Thobani Nzuza in God's Work. (Supplied)

Were you careful to maintain the involvement of the real unhoused community in the development of the film?

Sithabile Mkhize: Michael's engagement with the guys was always a part of the process. There was always the conversation with the actors and the general homeless community. There was an exchange of information, and they were interested in the filmmaking process. We told them about the development process, and then broke up into little groups. People spoke about their experiences of homelessness and what had brought them to the Denis Hurley Centre. It was a journey and an interesting experience. During production, we needed lots of extras, so we hired people from the homeless community when there were homeless people in the script. The Denis Hurley centre really helped facilitate that process.

How did you balance the representational issues you were interested in with the telling of a story that was true to the experiences of your subjects?

James: I see a lot of the film as a production that struggles to understand itself in many ways, hence the varied perspectives. The process of trying to navigate that space was a constant existential wrestling, but also an aesthetic wrestling. Trying to understand how to make a film about this subject, which I'd never experienced. Not just that, how does one not slip into the tropes of exploitation? The film struggles with itself and doesn't have all the answers. That's completely fine.

Mkhize: This is part of who Michael is as a filmmaker. He has an MA in philosophy and he’s always thinking critically about the world around him.

What do you hope audiences take away from the film?

James: On one hand, there's a desire to have a dialogue with empathy. We hope that the audience will be able to move past the emotive sensibilities of just feeling sorry or confused — where sympathy lies — and move into a sense of empathy. I also hope that this film will allow people to live differently and might make filmmakers question: how do we make a more useful kind of cinema in the world?