Faith Like Potatoes

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 Ston…

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…

Browse discussions about “Faith Like Potatoes”

Jump to Reddit for live threads on this title.