Similarly, Brink would not have included Ben slapping Cloete when he was forced to resign. Brink wants his audience to see Ben as the ordinary man- as one of them. Palcy, however (most likely because of Hollywood drama) portrayed Ben as the hero. He fought back much more forcefully in the movie than in the book.
The same holds true for Stanley. When Stanley shoots Stolz at the end of the film, it is too easy. It is most likely another way to please Hollywood and an audience that wants to see the movie end with a sense of finality. But that is the exact opposite of what Brink was trying to do! Brink ended the novel leaving the reader with many questions. The reader does not get a sense of finality, because in reality, there was none. He doesn’t get a sense of finality because it is up to the reader to continue the struggle. In an interview, Palcy said of Stolz’s murder, “It’s a message of warning that this decent man can be pushed to violence (Simon 58).” But, as John Simon puts it, “By making it look so easy, the director cheapens the small, hard-won advances some few have actually been able to gain (Simon 59).”
Palcy does a similar thing in the end with Jonathan. In the novel, Ben sees himself in Johan. It is essential- in the beginning, he says, “I feel I cannot really come to grips with all my former selves until I relive it through a son (Brink 29).” He says that he needs a son to understand everything that he did in his life, and why he did it. Throughout the novel, Brink makes it clear to his reader that Johan is following in his footsteps. He is glad to have his son’s support, but is slightly embarrassed by his son’s enthusiasm. This is very important when it comes to reading Ben’s character. Because Ben’s life has been completely taken over by his own enthusiasm for fighting society, he is worried about Johan. And more importantly, he can see through Johan (and also Viviers, a young teacher at his school) where he went wrong. Johan thinks that he can change the world- the very thing that Phil Bruwer warned him against. Ben does not want his son to make the same mistakes that he made. He even says to himself at one point in the novel, “There was something both terrifying and reassuring in the knowledge of the closeness of his son (Brink 75).” This single quote sums up his relationship with his son (and at the same time, with himself) very well.
The end of the movie certainly takes away from many of the things that Brink worked so hard to set up in his novel. In the movie, Johan helps his father to get the information that was collected published in the newspaper. This it leaves the typical audience member with not only a sense of finality, but also a sense that everything is going to turn out okay in the end. The book purposefully does neither of these things. In the book, the narrator informs us that Ben was killed when he was on his way to mail the narrator the documents. The narrator then poses the question: “How could the reporter have known it, unless Ben still had the letter with him when it happened? And if he had, then who had posted it afterwards (Brink 315)?” He then tells the reader that the documents reached him a week after they were mailed. The reader is left questioning whether or not the Security Police know about his possession of the documents. This is yet another method that Brink uses to leave it up to the reader, who is now in the same situation that the narrator was in at the beginning of the story. Because we’re unsure about what is to happen with the narrator, it is our job to carry it on- the narrator has delivered us our information, and it is in our hands.
Many other differences are present between the novel and the movie version of A Dry White Season, and one could go on about them all day. But they all come down to the same facts: both Brink and Palcy had reasons for their choices, and each successfully portrayed the messages that they wanted to get across. Palcy wanted to shock the viewer by visually showing him the social injustices being committed in South Africa. Brink, on the other hand, sought to have these issues resolved. Brink’s story was in many ways autobiographical, and almost surely many of his explorations into the moral aspects of what Ben was attempting to do were ways of addressing his own questions and insecurities about his personal choices. It is clear that the film does not reach out to the reader in the same way as the book. The movie fails to explore the simple human morality that is much of a part of the book, and the efforts made to address this subject barely scratch the surface. It leaves the reader with a moral obligation to follow the narrator’s footsteps, and poses the ultimate question:
Do we continue resisting injustice and moral corruption even when resistance seems futile, or do we capitulate and become silent accomplices? Mr. Brink argues persuasively that the answer is ineluctable. One acts, one protests, or one simply forfeits humanity (Watkins 21).