Is this Act III of the Yoruba Nollywood centre-stage pieces of 2022? The first was King of Thieves, which hit cinemas with laurels and applause, before making its way to become a frontman in Amazon’s relationship with Nigerian cinema. Since then, Netflix has very much taken the driving seat; first with Kunle Afolayan’s Anikulapo, which was led by Kunle Remi and Bimbo Ademoye on screen.
November had pretty much kicked off with Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman, another Netflix-heralded picture, which made a brief appearance in cinemas before turning on its ignition on the streaming platform. An adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s play, Death and the King’s Horseman, Elesin Oba is directed by the late Biyi Bandele, and stars Odunlade Adekola as the titular character, alongside Shaffy Bello, Omowunmi Dada, Deyemi Okanlawon, and others.
Of the three centre-pieces, Elesin Oba was undoubtedly the most-anticipated release. But how does it fare?
The Good
Like the first duo before it, Elesin Oba hits the spot in terms of celebrating the Yoruba life. Not just the glamour and celebratory aspect, but the sense of depth of language and attachment to culture it has. There will always be something pointed about conversing in metaphors whose figurative richness don’t obscure the message it’s passing; if anything, it emphasises it. Praising language is glamourous, and mean words are not so much mean words as they are daggers of dishonour and indictment.
Praise should also fall to Odunlade Adekola for his performance as the main character. For Odunlade, he could be classified as an actor in the midst of two worlds. If a division exists between the mainstream part of Nollywood and Yoru-Nolly department, Adekola exists somewhere in the middle, as being too much for one and not enough for the other. There’s a tendency for whatever roles he gets in the most commercially-visible films to be at best side characters, or at worst comical asides. But in Elesin Oba, as Elesin Oba, he’s neither funny or secondary. He’s the film. In all its glitz and glamour. All its pride and hubris. Whether as the King’s Horseman who’s about to fulfil his destiny, and will get what it wants; or as the ‘King’s Horseman’ who’s cladded in shame and can no longer see even the escapism in death, he lives all of this movie.
Elesin Oba also merits applause for its moments of reflecting anti-colonial rhetoric. The moments where it highlights the absurdity of colonial logic and its faux sense of superiority. It’s tiny, fleeting, and inconsistent, a bit like the original work it’s adapting, but it’s there, and can’t quite be denied, even if it could be overlooked.
The Bad
At the risk of being reductive, one could classify Elesin Oba as a long pforelay into its main, if not sole act. The movie is built up towards The King’s Horseman’s rite of passage. Yet, when that rite is denied, this movie doesn’t quite reflect and display the sense of betrayal and chaos that it’s meant to cause the people. To an extent, there is a sense of confusion that it portrays, and you could say that works because of a people so ingrained in their tradition, the first reaction to it being sullied would be one of bewilderment as to how to react. Still, there was no sense of desecration, of revolt at being robbed of one’s way of living, and much of the ire and indignation that is present is directed towards the individual who’s also denied and not the emblematic entity responsible for that violation.
Then there’s Deyemi Okanlawon as Olunde, which possesses some kind of contradiction. Before his appearance, he’s pretty much introduced as a character who broke from the tradition of his people to live a different kind of life overseas; hinting at an ideological transformation – for better or worse (okay, it’s worse) – and some form collaboration with oppressive forces. Yet, Olunde transforms into someone more critical of the Brits, which speaks to a kind of paradox, and also the defective notion of western enlightenment being what really opens one into seeing false pretences and faux morality. There’s also the question of the relationship between father and son, which, on screen, doesn’t have the meat to have us invested. Are we really supposed to get cathartic when we see Elesin break down at being called names by Olunde?
Elesin Oba, once again, gets points for language, and dialogue. But there are places where it misses. There’s the issue of how some of the dialect did feel a touch too last 20th century than early. Then there are the conversations between the British district officer and Yoruba-speaking characters, where, despite the language difference in communication, every nuance of one is seamlessly understood and coherently responded to by the other.
Elesin Oba does stay by the book quite well, and some of what one might consider flaws might be because it mostly gives Wole Soyinka’s work its due and doesn’t go off script, even if it doesn’t capture the sense of chaos in the climax as the play does. But the chance to explore and expand in the creative, political, and ideological areas was passed up.
The Ugly
I will not be giving any context or explanation to this: British people.
Conclusion
Elesin Oba gets more than enough points for trying. It’s display of tradition is laudable, and the expression of that clash with British disregard for tradition is, if not extensive, undeniable. And its cinematography is not half-bad.
But it fails to go beyond what’s given, and doesn’t explore areas ripe for exploration. Wole Soyinka wrote a work that was best read than watched, and worked more as theatrical than cinematic. And try as they did, Netflix doesn’t bring it to life enough.
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