I was brought up on a farm in the Free Sate a long time ago. Jong, when I first came to Johannesburg I got such a skrik.

Remember what I told you, this wealthy Franklin is proud, fierce, jealous, and irritable; a withstander of the nobility, and even of his neighbours, Reginald Front-de-Bœuf and Philip Malvoisin, who are no babes to strive withall.

, I.2.4.vii: I may say the same of these genethliacal studies: what is astrology but vain elections, predictions?

These scenes—filled with interpersonal violence, killings, and verbal and physical abuse—gradually become the inenarrable episodes in the film, episodes that tense up or challenge their own narrative flow.