Watch Winnie Mandela For Free

Strong and Moving!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Winnie and Nelson Mandela were key figures in the struggle in South Africa to abolish apartheid and gain freedom for all races, during the approximate 30+ years in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, which culminated in Nelson Mandela being elected President in the 1994 multiracial elections. In the more recent movie "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" we see much about Nelson's young life, upbringing, and his imprisonment after being convicted of terrorist activities. In that movie Winnie has an important role, but still secondary.In this movie, "Winnie Mandela", the emphasis is reversed. We see much of Nelson but the emphasis is on Winnie. Her early work as a nurse, her marriage to Nelson, and her gross mistreatment by the white officials, imprisoned for 16 months on suspicion alone and without a trial, and much of that in solitary confinement. They tried to break her spirit, to renounce the fight for freedom, but she never broke.When she got out she was hardened, and also influenced by the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 where white police shot and killed many black demonstrators, and many of those were shot in the back as they attempted to flee. So she and her supporters took a very hard line, gradually drifting away from the ideals of nonviolent freedom that Nelson espoused.There is no question, Winnie Mandela and her children were badly mistreated by the white South African government. And there is no doubt that her fervor played an important role in eventually getting Nelson freed and the government to abolish apartheid. But she was also branded as a criminal, and when Nelson became President it had to be without Winnie at his side.Very good movie about a complex and influential black woman. Jennifer Hudson is just superb in the title role as Winnie Mandela, and she sings the song played in the closing credits. Also superb is Terrence Howard as Nelson Mandela. Good as the white villain is Elias Koteas as De Vries, the man with dogged determination to break Winnie, but was never able to.

This biopic about the first wife of iconic and legendary South African statesman and apartheid adversary Nelson Mandela, stars Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) as the title character who was raised in a strict, rural upbringing with a schoolteacher father who was disappointed with the fact that she was his sixth daughter. Winnie worked hard to win his approval and when she was of age she moved to the city to pursue medical school -- which was unusual in a sexist, apartheid South Africa. It was here that she met (and almost reluctantly) fell in love with the young political revolutionary Mandela (Terrence Howard - Hustle & Flow) who was already an "enemy" of the white government for believing in equality.The film is rather shaky in that it doesn't really appear to know how it wants to portray Winnie and while an Oscar-winner (in a good performance with one STELLAR, knockout scene), Hudson does appear to have a limited acting range. After Nelson is arrested and incarcerated, Winnie also faces some horrible and unjust, inhumane abuses at the hands of the South African government. Once she is freed she attempts to carry his mantle but does so with some very questionable actions that have today tainted her legacy.The film perhaps wants to be overly honest but in doing so Winnie doesn't come across as a winning figure for such a biopic. She is quite polarizing and the "hero tone" the film presents is rather conflicting. This could possibly all be intentional on the filmmaker's part.Different time ... different place. She was strong and she was not broken and she did NOT give up. Like her or not -- she was no Nelson -- but I wish this movie had been better.

After watching movie Winnie Madikizela Mandela, I wondered how much Winnie, the main character, narrated on this movie about herself. Winnie was referred to as the Mother of the Nation, she was statues and beautiful, very intelligent and warrior spirited. Yet so much was left out about her diplomacy, about how she traveled around the world from country to country to gain world support for the release of her husband Nelson Mandela. The greatness of the woman was laminated to half her greatness in this movie. I remember when Winnie came to United States to meet to appeal the world be aware of apartheid and unjust imprisonment of many South Africans under apartheid. People were naming their children after Winnie and Nelson because of her image, which I must mention was distained. The population of South Africa including Nelson are under the influence of apartheid also Stokholm AND Helsinki syndromes.

"She spent nearly 500 days in prison, 400 of them alone in solitary. She was exiled, they harassed her, they nearly killed her. Her contribution to the struggle is beyond calculation." This movie follows the life of Winnie (Hudson) from birth to her life with husband Nelson Mandela (Howard) and beyond. It shows her transformation from shy student to activist. I hate to admit it but I knew next to nothing about this woman before I started the movie. For that reason going in my first thought was, why make a movie about her when Nelson is much more interesting. After watching this my thoughts changed to why don't they make more movies about her. I'm not sure how accurate this movie is but I found it to be very interesting and really made me feel for her. Seeing a woman who was shy and had her life ahead of her end up being broken by seeing the way her life was affected by her husbands sentence gives you conflicting emotions. On one hand you want her to do the things she is doing while at the same time you know she should stop. The end of the movie is so bittersweet that it's hard to feel happy about what happened. The only really bad thing I have to say about this is that it really had the feel of a Lifetime movie. Overall, my feelings went from why a movie about her to why aren't there more movies about her. I highly recommend this. I give it an A-.