African history, Hollywood-style, in “The Woman King”
In a way, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” follows a traditional path: a well budgeted Hollywood epic, loosely based on events in history, which creates a high-energy action story driven by human emotion. In another way, “The Woman King” follows a non-traditional path. Not because in this historical epic the main characters are primarily women, and not just because in this historical epic the main characters are all Black. This is a commercial Hollywood historical epic that is set completely in West Africa. And Hollywood has not always known what to do with Africa…
It’s impossible not to read the actual film of “The Woman King” through the lens of Hollywood’s own dismissiveness of African history that is not suffused in slavery. Indeed, slavery does emerge as a secondary theme in the film. How could it not when the film is set in the early 19th century, when the Kingdom of Dahomey retains some of its wealth through trade of goods and services to European traders. Some of those “goods” are prisoners from defeated tribes. You can feel the weight of responsibility running through the screenplay from Dana Stevens (from a story by her and actress Maria Bello, who also produces); the film spends a lot of time setting up the wider dynamics of this 19th century Africa, avoiding in some ways the potentially messier attributes of this tale. There is no time for any kind of studied engagement with the history of the Agojie, the all-female unit that protects the king; instead, the film has two distinct stories it’s setting up to contrast, and then complement, each other.
Viola Davis, in her first lead role as a definitive action heroine, plays General Nanisca. She is the leader of the Agojie, commanding her team through a transition period as they begin to step back from slave-trading. She is also carrying the ghosts of past trauma which the film slowly brings to a climax in a final act sequence. The contrasting story is of young Nawi (an excellent Thuso Mbedu) a brash, girl whose father gives her to the King after a recent act of imprudence. If she can survive the intense training for Agojie recruits, she will have a place in the kingdom forever. The two arcs run parallel to each other before they intersect towards the end in a clash that feels right out of the Hollywood playbook. But then, this is a Hollywood epic, right? And even when “The Woman King” is good (and it is oftentimes very good), it feels
like a distinct melange of the African and the Hollywood that feels instructive – from the performers to its technical sensibilities.
It feels great to see a director like Prince-Bythewood, whose debut film “Love and Basketball” is an essential 21st century piece of Black American cinema, land a much-anticipated premiere in the Gala Presentations section at TIFF. But it’s also been curious to watch the African identity in “The Woman King” at the same festival where Biyi Bandale’s similarly energetic “The King’s Horseman” features a buoyant cast of continental Africans speaking both Yoruba and English. PrinceBythewood is an excellent director of performers and “The Woman King” is no different but it is a reminder of the specific lilt of African accents that Hollywood still hasn’t quite mastered, especially when an actual arc in the film concerns the refusal of the characters to speak the coloniser’s language and retain their own indigenous tongue. It makes for a moment of unintentional humour, as the actors all speak in accented English. To be fair to the commitment of the cast, “The Woman King” is a success in performance and judging performances by accent verisimilitude has never been a particular thoughtful way of responding to film. But the accent gradations are more of a reminder how African performers and directors still feel boxed out of the Hollywood industry. And this is a Hollywood film.
If the energy of the cast resonates for their commitment, it is no surprise that the highlight is a charismatic Sheila Atim as Amenza, the General’s second-in-command. Atim, a British stage performer, crafts the kind of breakout performance that makes for the beginnings of a noble career. Atim’s naturalistic energy is the needed linchpin for the freneticism that defines the middle section of the film as things begin to get upended, and it is with her key role that a late film twist is best represented. Price-Bythewood’s films have been marked by moving scenes of women in conversation and a late-night conversation between Atim and Davis leaves the spectacle of battle for something tender and moving and feels so valuable to the reach of this film. But everyone in “The Woman King” plays well with others and it’s here that Price-Bythewood has been consistently best. After her work on “The Old Guard”, she’s become even more adept
at action sequences and “The Woman King” succeeds on spectacle. Still, she knows that for this story to really work it must be a human one more than anything, and so “The Woman King” carefully devotes its most tender inclinations to the women in context with each other. The care is so decisive the film is explicitly less cogent when the few men take centre stage. There’s a romantic arc that feels shoehorned in with Nawi that is important to a plotpoint but feels like a distraction from female bonds with Lashana Lynch’s Izogie and Adrienne Warren’ Ode. Elsewhere John Boyega presents a commanding visage as the king but feels just too stolid for the feminine energy that works better when the women take over the screen.
“The Woman King” is full-throated in its exuberance, and Gina Prince-Bythewood succeeds in harnessing her empathetic approach to her characters a film that flirts with Epic proportions. There’s an undertone of plaintiveness coursing through “The Woman” King when we think of how the legacy of West Africa, Africa at large, and the African diaspora has spent the successive centuries since the film is set grappling with the trauma of colonisation and the slave trade. It makes even the potential happy wins of the climaxes feel suffused with a sobriety that complicates things a bit more. When Sheila Atim leads the women in a song (a wonderful scene that feels too brief) it feels tinged with a sombreness that is electric. It is the inevitable nature of any film which ventures into the past of Africa, a region still underserved and underrepresented in global cinema. So, the sheen of a lot of this invariably feels like a Hollywoodesque tale than something truly Pan-African. But if read through the Hollywood lens, the view is pulled into focus so you can take in how robust the film’s approach to the genre is and fully committed it is to the mythical reach of this story that becomes hard to resist by the last act. What’s more, it is excellently paced and that counts for a lot in a film of this genre. “The Woman King” filters Africa through a very specific lens of Hollywood, but it’s personal and visceral enough that even this Hollywood refraction feels visceral and vital. Let “The Woman King”, perhaps, be a transition point to more engaged film interest in the African continent beyond the obvious – not just through the lens of Hollywood, but further afield. There are so many stories to tell.