Faith Like Potatoes (2006)

Mundane South African biography about a struggling farmer who turns to God.

RELEASED IN 2006 and directed by Regardt van den Bergh, "Faith like Potatoes" is a drama based on the life of Angus Buchan in the late 70s who moved his family from the political unrest of Zambia to eastern South Africa to start a maize farm. Buchan (Frank Rautenbach) and his family/employees (Jeanne Neilson and Hamilton Dlamini) face many challenges in their new home as Angus eventually feels led by faith to grow potatoes despite a severe drought.

The documentary-like tone is similar to other African autobiographies like “I Dreamed of Africa” (2000) and “Nowhere in Africa” (2001), except with the added faith element. I’ve never heard of Buchan, but he went on to become a fairly significant South African evangelist (with a TV show). The movie focuses on his humble beginnings, his eventual conversion to Christ and service thereof but, surprisingly, the faith element doesn’t even come to the fore until about the halfway point, which is when the film finally gets interesting.

Speaking of which, being based on an autobiography, the story lacks the compelling drive of the typical three-act script in preference for real-life mundaneness. Those other two films had the same issue. Yet this can be refreshing in that the movie just shows the way it was without resorting to exaggeration like, say, Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991), which opted for sensationalist (eye-rolling) mythmaking and contains utter fabrications.

Of course critics argue that this movie ALSO conveys mythmaking fabrications and, furthermore, that the theology is contradictory and troublesome. Does it? Is it? I don’t think so, but I’m not going to explain because it would take too long and, besides, the answers are in the flick in a subdued way. Watch it, reflect on it and make your own call.

THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 56 minutes and was shot in South Africa. WRITERS: Angus Buchan (book) and Regardt van den Bergh (screenplay).

GRADE: B-/C+

Faith Like Potatoes (2006) is two hours of cognitive dissonance. The plot follows Angus Buchan (Frank Rautenbach) a Scotsman who fancies himself a “white African.” Looks like we’ve got ourselves a reverse Idi Amin.

You know who also is from Africa? Storm from the X-Men. I always thought she was more a god than a mutant. I don’t know what the extent of her powers is, but if she can control all weather, she would arguably be mightier than God — at least the way he’s portrayed in this film.

Weather has no moral allegiance, but if it did, the God of Faith Like Potatoes commands what we could call “good” weather. For example, you can count on Him for rain to put out a “runaway fire” — but the lightning that strikes a Zulu woman dead? Must have been Zeus. And don’t even get me started on El Niño. That’s Satan’s work right there. Angus explicitly calls it “a drought from hell… that’s where El Niño comes from and that’s where it belongs.”

It never occurs to anyone that maybe God is just really good at PR. If He can control water why wouldn’t He have power over fire? Perhaps He started the conflagration just so He could extinguish it, and He waited for Angus to pray for rain so He could take the credit. Otherwise, God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient — He can’t stop the fire from igniting in the first place, and it must be brought to His attention before He can do anything about it.

At one point, Angus mentions that in the Bible, “God used ordinary people” like himself. It seems as if God is doing just that — He’s using Angus to get to the Zulu. Is there a Zulu religion with Zulu rituals? A Zulu god or gods whom they pray to? Not in this movie. No wonder a little coincidental precipitation is enough to win them over to the side of Jehovah and His only Son, Angus Christ. Hey, don’t look at me. The filmmakers were the ones who had Angus bringing people from the dead.

To say that Faith Like Potatoes has a paternalistic view of native Africans is putting it mildly. First, Angus is vengeful and wrathful like Old-Testament God. Later, he’s patient and understanding like Jesus. Either way, the Zulu are never any better than little children who crash your tractor when you’re not looking. Earlier, Angus’s wife said the Buchans were like “gypsies in the Garden of Eden” — do you think the tractor symbolizes the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

Speaking of symbolism, the title refers to the fact that potatoes are not like maize. You can see maize, but you gotta have faith in potatoes. I guess violence is like potatoes too. We hear a lot about deadly attacks on white farmers that have left thousands of casualties, and we’re told the Zulu “have been fighting blood feuds for generations.” Angus thinks they should pray all that violence away. From the lack of evidence on display here, someone else beat him to the punch.