Dooshima

The first few minutes of “Dooshima” were not encouraging. The only recognizable actor was Maureen Ihua and all other actor’s in the frame seemed to be doing their best to test the viewer’s patience. However, the movie eventually starts when the flashbacks begin.

Dooshima is presumably the story of a young Ichoa kingdom who goes outside his kingdom and marries a Tiv girl. I assume that the storyline aims to show the troubles that come from inter-cultural marriages and this is simply an assumption. Why? Because there were also other storylines going on in this movie. There was the Nosa Rex story where his wife is a philanderer and the Mike Ezu story where he is also a philanderer.

The main focus of inter-cultural marriages really doesn’t come to the center until the final moments of the movie. At this point, radical things just begin to happen and the movie ends. I don’t want to say that the way the movie ended was as though the director ran out of film but it was not too far off. There is a possibility that the movie had a great premise and the story began with an interesting plot but either the writers changed towards the end or something because it does not end as well as it started.

Up until the end of the flashbacks, the movie was truly entertaining however it was not immersive. There was a certain air of superficiality/artificiality that shrouded it all. The actors were performing, the sets were appropriate, the atmosphere was right but they didn’t merge to create an immersive feel.

As earlier mentioned, the movie had about three different storylines. Possibly because of this and how no one storyline was put as the center focus, there wasn’t much emotional investment in the movie. Hence, when the end approached and all the radical things began to happen the viewer was still detached from it all.

Dooshima is Yul Edochie’s directorial debut (please correct me if I am wrong) and it was definitely a nice attempt. I am still not sure why the movie was named after one of the most irrelevant characters in the story (I am guessing because the character was played by the producer?).

From Mike to Yul to Esther, the performances in this movie definitely increased the value of the movie. Nosa Rex was also very impressive. He is so naturally comfortable in front of the camera that one might assume that he has been doing this for decades. The single worst performance in this movie was definitely Rose Gwabo who played Dooshima.