Pot of Gold

Whoever wrote this must be some kind of sadist. I often complain about Nollywood’s obsession with watching people suffer but even with this one I was enthralled. And I often complain that sometimes they go to extra lengths for a happy ending, but here that was all I wanted. Warning to those of faint heart, you will cry and cry a lot.

The plot follows a loyal woman mistreated by her husband and their family.The movie should have been called House of Gold because it was beautiful how they contrasted the luxurious setting with the characters’ suffering. The story starts immediately, it is engaging and interesting and more importantly it involves you from the beginning. The character work here was wonderful, relatable and real.  I have never hated a character as much as I hated Ken Erics’ and I sympathized with Ebube Nwagbo’s. The first part was fast paced, paid incredible attention to detail and contained the breadth of the suffering porn; alternatively the second part took a more Nollywood approach. It was slow, wasted so much time and just did not have the control that the first had. They kept shoving in stupid storylines about the housemaid and the gate man, showing quite irrelevant stuff and just wasting so much time. It was almost like there were two different directors and the first part of the film is vastly superior to the second. It is still a good film altogether and takes a novel ending, it just combines two different genres of film together.

The performances in part one was superb and this included a brief cameo from Zack Orji and a slightly longer one from Walter Anga. Ken Erics plays likeable roles and this time it was refreshing to see him embody such an unlikeable one. Seriously guys, you will hate his character from the depths of your soul, it will anger you in a way that other abusive husbands do not. Ebube Nwagbo plays the abused wife very well; you get angry at her for her actions but still feel sorry for her. It is a very thin line to walk, between being so stupid that people start to hate you for being in that situation and being able to elicit sympathy. Nnebe Chinenye was brilliant as well; it was a very tight cast. The second part on the other hand was not as good, they were fine but their tacky actions played against them. It is hard to make the look good, but they tried. Lizzygold Onuwaje was good as big Omoni and I cannot actually fault her performance.

The location blew me away. The house of gold was magnificent, a true house of gold and a feast for the eyes. The soundtrack was one note, they had one song but towards the end it actually started to be ironic and bittersweet. The visual were top-notch and the audio was as well. The makeup on Ken Erics was just hilarious but still believable, and the tattoos. The less said about that, the better.

In conclusion, this is an emotional one and I greatly recommend it. This is my best film of the year so far and hopefully things can only get better. BTW I lost my notes for this film and had to watch the whole thing again, which really should qualify as cruel and unusual punishment.