MASTER HAROLD AND THE BOYS

Hally: It’s a bloody awful world when you come to think of it. People can be real bastards.

Sam: That’s the way it is, Hally.

Hally: It doesn’t have to be that way. There is something called progress you know. We don’t exactly burn people at the stake anymore.

Don’t talk crap, Hally! You don’t even know what the word ‘sympathy’ means.

Hally: Not many intellectuals are prepared to shovel manure with the peasants then go home and write a ‘little book’ called War and Peace. Incidentally, Sam, he was somebody else who, to quote, ‘…did not distinguish himself scholastically.

I thought I was keeping it straight and I’ve suddenly wondered whether it is straight, and whether it matters whether it is or not.

Do you think Fathers do any more for their sons, except in terms of money, that Mothers do for their daughters.

Hally: Anyway, that’s my man of magnitude. Charles Darwin! Who’s yours?

Sam: [without hesitation] Abraham Lincoln.

Hally: I might have guessed as much. Don’t get sentimental, Sam. You’ve never been a slave, you know. And anyway, we freed your ancestors here in South Africa long before the Americans.

Somebody once said that there are only two places you can be alone—inside your mother’s womb and inside your coffin.

She’s no match for him when it comes to a battle of words.

You were scared of the ball because it was big and hard and could hurt you, just like life can hurt you.

Doesn’t it sort of bug you that people like your dad can’t take care of the world?

Little white boy ... and a black man old enough to be his father flying a kite.

Fly another kite, I suppose. It worked once, and this time I need it as much as you do."

It's the likes of you that kept the Inquisition in business. It's called bigotry."

Hally: I oscillate between hope and despair for this world as well, Sam.

In fact, I was shit-scared that we were going to make fools of ourselves.

To be one of those finalists on that floor is like... like being in a dream world in which accidents don't happen."

Be careful, Hally." "Of what? The truth? I seem to be the only one around here who is prepared to face it.

Sam: So then what is art?

Hally: You want a definition?

Sam: Ja.

Hally: [He realizes he has got to be careful. He gives the matter a lot of thought before answering.] Philosophers have been trying to do that for centuries. What is Art? What is Life? But basically I suppose it's... the giving of meaning to matter.

Sam: Nothing to do with beautiful?

Hally: It goes beyond that. It's the giving of form to the formless.

It's just that life felt the right size in there... not too big and not too small. Wasn't so hard to work up a bit of courage. It's got so bloody complicated since then.

There's nothing wrong with the world. It just goes around and around, and you gotta get on with your life.

I’m in the business of making people realize that their opinions aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

He's a white man and that's good enough for you.

Sam: There's no collisions out there, Hally. Nobody trips or stumbles or bumps into anybody else. That's what that moment is all about. To be one of those finalists on that dance floor is like... like being in a dream about a world in which accidents don't happen.

Hally: Jesus, Sam! That's beautiful!

Willie: [Can endure waiting no longer.] I'm starting! [Willie dances while Sam talks.]

Sam: Of course it is. That's what I've been trying to say to you all afternoon. And it's beautiful because that is what we want life to be like. But instead, like you said, Hally, we're bumping into each other all the time. Look at the three of us this afternoon. I've bumped into Willie, the two of us have bumped into you, you've bumped into your mother, she bumping into your Dad... None of us knows the steps and there's no music playing. And it doesn't stop with us. The whole world is doing it all the time. Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia, England is bumping into India, rich man bumps into poor man. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we're sick and tired of it now. It's been going on for too long. Are we never going to get it right? ... Learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it?

Hally: You've got a vision, Sam!

Sam: Not just me. What I'm saying to you is that everybody's got it. That's why there's only standing room left for the Centenery Hall in two weeks' time. For as long as the music lasts, we are going to see six couples get it right, the way we want life to be.

Hally: But is that the best we can do, Sam watch six finalists dreaming about the way it should be?

Sam: I don't know. But it starts with that. Without the dream we won't know what we're going for. And anyway I reckon there are a few people who have got past just dreaming about it and are trying for something real.

Flicker of morbid interest.

"It doesn't have to be that way. There something called progress, you know. We don't exactly burn people at the stake anymore.

Sam: But don’t let me see it. The secret is to make it look easy. Ballroom must look happy, Willie, not like hard work. It must Ja!It must look like romance.

I think I spent more time in there with you chaps than anywhere else in that dump. And do you blame me? Nothing but bloody misery wherever you went."

All you've got to do is stand up and walk away from it.

Anybody who thinks there's nothing wrong with this world needs to have his head examined. Just when things are going all right, without fail someone or something will come along and spoil everything. Somebody should write that down as a fundamental law of the Universe. The principle of perpetual disappointment. If there is a God who created this world, he should scrap it and try again.

He certainly was trying to teach people to get the steps right.

I'm all right on oppression.

A hint of water, a whisper of foam. Long, white tails streaming behind them as they twist and turn in the bay.

Yes! That's what all our talk about a decent world has been... just so much bullshit.""We did say it was still only a dream.""And a bloody useless one at that. Life's a fuck-up and it's never going to change.

Tolstoy may have educated his peasants, but I've educated you.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.

Mr. Sam was our father. He knew about our dreams and ambitions.

Without me breathing down your neck all the time, you’d lean even more to the right than you do now.

Sam, Willie ... is he in there with you boys?

But things will change, you wait and see.

I mean, how do I wash off yours and your father's filth?...I've also failed. A long time ago I promised myself I would do something, but you've just shown me...Master Harold...that I've failed.

There’s no question he’s smarter than I am, but does that give him the right to call me a name like that?

Anybody who lets facts interfere with his imagination is a person who will never enjoy anything else again.

You want to get into the story as well, do you?

We need a definition of greatness, and I suppose that would be somebody who... somebody who benefited all mankind."

Tonight I find Hilda and say sorry. And make promise I won't beat her no more. You hear me, Boet Sam?

It was you who start me ballroom dancing.

Aah, violence is the only way I can make people pay attention to me.