Journey to Self

The promos for Journey to Self were amazing. It had 5 beautiful women on the cover staring intently at me and it just screamed deep learned words like: ‘forward-thinking’, ‘revolutionary’ and the ever elusive ‘different’. To be honest, I never really knew what the movie was about until I saw the movie, yet I was probably one of the most excited about the movie.

Not knowing what to expect, watching this movie was literally a journey for me because I don’t think I even read the synopsis talk less of paying attention to the trailer. From the start the movie solicits solid emotions from the viewer with the first tangible scene plunging right into the middle of dinner in a household with an abusive husband.

All the ladies involved brought their A-Game to the screen. There was first Katherine Obiang who plays the role of a on-the-surface larger than life character who seems unfazed by any of life’s realities. As the movie progresses we find that underneath all this toughness is a hardship. I especially liked Katherine’s character’s story, even though technically it was the least urgent and almost the least-underwhelming because depending on the viewer her situation might also really not seem like much of a crisis. It was just different and successfully brought a mostly-western theme into a Nigerian movie in a way that fit and could actually solicit some empathy. As regards Ms. Obiang’s performance she was amazing as the strong fierce woman without any troubles and after the emotions were unraveled she was strong and expressed the weakness well enough. However, in comparison to the other ladies I’m led to say that her weak moments were not as emotionally moving as that of the other ladies.

Nse Ikpe-Etim plays the role of a strong, emancipated woman. Who just so happens to be happily married, a fact that shocked me because Nollywood hardly ever presents the strong woman in a marriage scenario. Scratch that, most movie industries do not usually present strong women in marriage situations at least not in marriage situations that work or that they work towards. It was a breath of fresh air to see this new dynamic and Nse played it off well. Of course her character is not without her own problems but the difference with Nse’s character is that not only does she have deep dark secrets she also has on the surface character problems. At times I almost wondered, “what the heck? Why is Nse acting like this” but when you take into consideration the character’s background it makes more sense. Absolutely loved the way Nse portrayed this strong, rich, enabled woman in her moment of emotional crisis. Props to the scriptwriter but more props to Nse for giving it life, especially at the end of the balcony scene and how she moves from tears back to strong woman.

Ashionye Michelle-Raccah is an actress I haven’t seen since the movie “Jungle Ride” and considering that even that was my first glimpse of her on screen, I was more excited about seeing her again. Then imagine how I felt when in her first scene she is being pummeled by an abusive husband. I’m not aware of whether or not Ashionye is full time actress but I must say that someone who is capable of saying so much without any dialogue and not appearing excessive especially in that bathroom-mirror scene needs to do Nollywood a favor and become a full time actress. Ashionye’s character is the only one that has no external appearance of strength and yet she still managed to seem strong even in a situation that rendered her weak. In clothes that made her look weak and an obvious facial bruise that reemphasized her weakness she was still strong in her weakness.

Seeing Dakore again in this movie was the metaphorical icing on an already fantastic cake. Her character was the least ‘deep’, so to say. She was suffering from very everyday problems and had been making the same mistakes for a very long time. The only difference from her character and the regular everyday Nollywood rendition is that it had no Freudian roots to an abusive father or childhood rape. It was a bit hard to relate or make sense of her problems considering her character’s status in society. Be that as it may, Dakore did a good job with her rendition. The character’s really doesn’t have a strong emotional base and almost seems like it was just added in so that we could have Dakore in the movie.

And finally the most intriguing one of them all Tosin Sido was the absentee sister of this quintuplet bunch. With only flashback scenes in this movie, Tosin was still able to make her presence felt. She had the most important character in the entire film and her story was the most intriguing and the most emotional. The casting for Tosin was beyond on-point because in retrospect I cannot imagine another character fitting the characterization so well. Granted she didn’t have many speaking scenes, and thankfully so because in the car scene where she was speaking, she seemed to be going through the motions. But from this point I must address the problems with this movie.

For the most part I could barely hear the dialogues or monologues or voice-overs because either the music was too loud or the tone was just too low. I felt like I missed most of the integral parts of Tosin’s story because quite frankly I could not hear what she was saying. As regards the video it served to send the message of sober and somber but many times it was just really low quality, and I will not deny that some of the photography did not make any sense to me. I didn’t understand why the camera was doing all that acrobatics in the first couple of scenes in Tosin’s house.

I will tell you this, the movie is very dramatic almost to the extent that some might regard it ‘melodramatic’. If you’re looking for fun this is not the movie for you. But move you it will, especially in regards to Tosin’s story. At the end I was really hoping that she wasn’t dead and had just relocated to a different country, unfortunately she had relocated to heaven. It brings up a really good point about listeners never being heard.

The movie ends when it needs to and I will be the first to admit that some of the stories are not as emotional as they are presented. The movie is not for everyone because I will be the first to admit that I almost plead boredom halfway through the movie, and the audio didn’t do much to help. I will say one thing though that it’s a different kind of movie and does not in anyway conform to the usual Nollywood formula. Just because it’s not what we’re used to doesn’t make it a bad movie. It had a point to convey, it sent that point home and it ended. Simple and short.