MOVIE REVIEW: ANIKULAPO

The first scene of Anikulapo is captivating.  It excited me. The story of the akala bird promised a jolly good ride and it would take about an hour for me to know why Saro ended up with what looked like a busted eyeball and was apparently brutally murdered. The story is simple; too simple for the kind of noise it came with. It does too little to impress and while ‘too much cook spoils the broth’, this broth was a little bit bland for the dish it was served in, and the feast it was created for. Halfway, the energy seemed to continuously dwindle until it reached the end- an ending that seemed to be in a rush to come.

The greatest strength of Anikulapo is the setting. The showcase of tribal marks, pottery, the buildings, the pounding of the mud, the aso oke, perhaps even some of the dialogue, the traditional welding, horse riding, saro’s aso-oke production business, the war in polygamy, irun didi, the beauty of beads. We even saw a woman influential in trade. The core of the Yoruba traditional culture. Except the absolutely unneeded nudity which jumped into our faces out of nowhere and obviously has no place in a movie set in the 17th century. Unless of course if its purpose is to drive conversations on social media. Then I’d say it served its purpose.

After it climaxed, the story simply stopped being compelling; and while the core lessons were drawn out in the second part of the movie, it seemed like the playwright just got tired at some point. The dialogues didn’t do much to showcase the core language competency of the Oyo people. Perhaps that’s what disappointed me the most about the movie. We watched ‘Breaded life’. We saw how Bimbo Ademoye excellently played the role of a Yoruba speaking Egun woman. It simply didn’t look like enough was put into the spoken language of the actors. When the Yoruba is not being ‘Lagonized’, there were mispronunciations littered all around the movie, and for God’s sake, Princess Omowunmi spoke awful Yoruba. It felt like I was watching wakanda people with their horrible African accents all over again.

One of my greatest complaints about ‘Anikulapo’ is the painful underutilization of music. At the very least, where was the bata drum? Where were the drummers? Where is the music? Because what we eventually got was a song with the piano blarring loudly. There was simply too much silence where traditional folklore music would have done part of the storytelling; where ‘head-bursting’ ewi would have captivated the viewers, where alaafin’s oriki would have aroused memories of the Late Oba Lamidi Adeyemi III? 

Where were the proverbs? The thought provoking dialogues? The little glimpses of history that should have been infused into dialogues? And why did the story of Oyo end with Saro’s ‘death’. Everyone knew Arolake wasn’t dead. At least one scene of closure from the Oyo POV would have made a lot of sense. Did the king keep searching considering the fact that Arolake was his favorite? What happened after? 

I thought that at some point, the continuous resuscitation of the dead using the power of akala would destroy the balance of life and death in the town where it is being used, or in the life of its user. The worthiness of a second chance wasn’t a concern anymore; he just continued bringing people back from the dead without naturally having the power to do so. Surely, that should have disrupted a natural order? The scene where the resuscitated old woman questioned Saro; 

‘Ta lo ran o nise?’ (who solicited your help to wake me up?)  would have been a good time to draw a direct inference to the taking away of a second chance worthiness decision by the divine bird and the perfect point to introduce a downward spiral of consequences.  Furthermore, considering the fact that Saro merely got a second chance at living even though the akala bird did not find him worthy of the second chance, I expected to see the bird again at one point or the other before the ending of the movie. Did the bird lose its power with the gourd even though we were told its abilities were divine? A bird with the power to decide life and death got scared off by a tired, stick wielding woman and it ended there?

Bimbo Ademoye was excellent. Kunle Remi obviously gave his all. Although apart from perhaps the intention to transport the viewers back to the past, I honestly do not see the need for a rich casting of nollywood legends out of whom some do not even utter a word until the movie ended. The only purpose it served, for me, is nostalgia and while I don’t see that as a bad thing, after the initial excitement of seeing them, everything else fell flat. Too much effort was put into the richness of a cast who the playwright had no intention of utilizing. What was the need to cast Kae-Kasim, who couldn’t even speak. Apart from the speculation of the 2 main characters, we got no real story into why we at least had to watch a whispering king whose interpreter sounded like a miniature Kola Olawuyi and should have been casted as an akewi.

Overall, I love cinematography, which honestly seems to be one of the major focus of many Nollywood producers in recent times. Anikulapo did not disappoint on this front. It had its lessons too; ones that are consciously attuned to the sensibility of both genders. So many that 5 days after, it’s still the topic of conversation on basically every social media platform. It feels like the unending dialogue after ‘Acrimony’ all over again. I enjoyed watching it, and once I got past my annoyance at the lack of music, the unnecessary length and the loopholes. I do like the story. It’s a good watch.

However, it is not exceptional. And definitely not enough for an Oscar consideration IN MY OPINION.