“It is a beautiful biopic that does not purport to be a strictly historical work.”
The Ransome Kuti name is a famous name in Nigeria. It is carried by several colourful characters who have imprinted that name on the consciousness of their countrymen, for different reasons.
There was, for example, Olikoye, the Professor of Paediatrics who many regard as the father of Primary Health Care in Nigeria. A man of radical bent from a family acclaimed for anti-establishment activism achieving fame as a Minister in a military dictatorship was something of an oxymoron, but there it was. Olikoye was equally colourful as a Consultant Paediatrician at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idiaraba, and no junior doctor who trained under him was ever likely to forget their terror at how he was liable to descend on you publicly like a ton of bricks if a child died under your care in the Children’s Emergency Room.
Beko, Fela’s younger brother was another medical doctor who was perpetually enmeshed in medical politics in the Nigeria Medical Association in a period rife with strikes and confrontations with government. After a hard game of squash at Ikoyi Club, he would drink liberally of a red-tinged concoction that was prepared specially for him by the barman. It was potent liquor, and one day you asked how he would drive his lumbering Volvo from Ikoyi to his home at Anthony Village after imbibing so much spirits.
‘Don’t worry’, he said. The car knows its way home.’
And Fela – the most famous product of that iconic family, who elevated the name to the stratosphere even as he repudiated it when he renamed himself ‘Fela Anikulapo Kuti’.
Barely a month after the invasion of his home by soldiers and policemen on the fateful day that is credited with the decline and eventual death of his seventy-seven-year-old mother, you watched Fela sing about it at the Shrine. His arm was in a sling, and part of his head was covered in plaster, over which someone had fashioned a stylish cap. He casually tore into the man that made the cap for him as he tried several times to adjust it on stage.
‘…E no put sense for im sense…’
And then he began the rendition of Kalakuta Show, a song that has now gone into history as one of the most famous in his oeuvre. He was, of course, not just an innocent man being assaulted without reason by a crude and dictatorial militarised state apparatus. The story was much more complex than that.
Bolanle Austen-Peters’ film ‘Funmilayo Ransome Kuti’ is about the matriarch of the Ransome Kuti family. It is the story of a major figure in the social and political history of Nigeria, and an avatar in female activism. It is narrated as a recapitulation sometime after the orgy of violence known as ‘Kalakuta Show’ as she lay recuperating in a hospital ward.
It is a beautiful biopic that does not purport to be a strictly historical work. The famous gap between Funmilayo’s front teeth – what the Yoruba call ‘eji’, is present early on, but it disappears in her teenage and young adult years, only to reappear in the finished article in Joke Silva’s highly creative characterisation.
Funmilayo is the centre of the story, and other powerful historical figures appear only fleetingly. Her husband Israel was a rebel and a potentate in his own right – going from CMS Grammar School Lagos to Abeokuta Grammar School where he met his future wife, to Fourah Bay College, and then working as a teacher at Abeokuta before becoming a Principal at Ijebu Ode Grammar School and later back at Abeokuta Grammar School. He was the first President of Nigeria Union of Teachers. Once while walking past a military encampment in Abeokuta, he was asked to remove his cap before the British flag. He refused, and it led to an altercation.
His own father Rev Josiah Jesse JJ Ransome Kuti, another transient figure in the film, was a clergyman and musical composer who set many Christian hymns to Yoruba and composed many songs. He was the first Nigerian to release a record album, and the composer of the international classic ‘Ise Oluwa, ko le baje o…’. The apple of the Kuti genes – whether in musical genius or rebellion against authority, it seemed, did not fall far from the tree, or drop anonymously from heaven.
The familiar challenge of how to mix the dialogue of a period piece between Yoruba and English recurs here, yet again.
‘Funmilayo Ransome Kuti’ skips nimbly between these possibilities and gets beyond language to meaning and action. The stark, explicit conversation with the Ogboni and the final confrontation with the Alake and his titled chiefs in the denouement employs words that would be raunchy in any other language or context, but which merely reflect the place of the feminine essence in Yoruba lore and world view.
The viewer can believe Joke Silva’s character as she is thrown off the balcony to an end-of-life filled with pain and left with nothing but reminiscences. These include the love of her life – an ever-supportive Israel taken away from her all-too-early by cancer. The viewer does not get to see her other battles. Even her foray as far afield as China championing the cause of women’s rights is only mentioned in passing.
This is a haunting film that says a lot, but also leaves a lot unsaid, about a powerful matriarch who lived out a life of relentless struggle to improve the lives of women folk. In the middle of this, she remained the mother-hen to her highly androgynous family, who perpetually clustered around her and drew energy and inspiration from her resilience.
A very good film, well worth the watching.
‘Funmilayo Ransome Kuti’ is produced by Bolanle Auste- Peters. It is currently showing on Prime Video network
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