Aníkúlápó

With Aníkúlápó’s first few minutes, Kunle Afolayan gives us a tour of what he has accomplished in bringing this movie to life. Shots of nature, like forests and rivers are rich and vibrant, while the mystical, like a burning bird and skeletons are handled impressively enough, especially if you take off Hollywood tinted glasses, but with so many shots, and no single one allowed more than a few seconds, the result comes off a bit like a slideshow. And it would be easy to place that as the problem with Aníkúlápó – Kunle Afolayan’s eagerness to showcase his visual masterpiece getting in the way of proper storytelling – but the drawbacks to this movie are a little more layered.

Aníkúlápó tracks the story of Saro, a dress weaver in ancient Yoruba land. His journey begins as a stranger in Oyo village, where he is found by the benignant Awuran (Sola Sobowale), who offers him food, a place to rest, and even a job. Her generosity is not rooted in altruism. It is soon revealed that she desires him sexually, and the feeling is mutual. As his business grows in stature, she gifts him the opportunity to clothe the king’s wives, and to thank his benefactor in the worst way, he swiftly turns his attention to Arolake (Bimbo Ademoye), the king’s youngest bride and the female lead.

Arolake is hated by her co-wives simply for being more sexually appealing to the king, and for this she is made an outcast in the palace. The new couple decides to elope to begin a new life, though this only happens after a (near) death experience and several weeks spent lost in the forest. As a silver lining to this suffering, however, Saro is granted the power to raise people from the dead. What Saro does with this newfound power exposes, especially in the last act, what ordinary men do when placed in positions of great power.

Throughout the story, there are different points at which sexual desire helped move the story along, where it gives characters the impetus to make a choice that would affect the story immensely. Once or twice would be fine, but to constantly rely on lust when there are so many reasons for which people do things – pride, greed, envy and so on – exposes lazy storywriting. Kunle Afolayan has famously compared his latest to Game Of Thrones the HBO series, and it is easy to see why, with epic setting and lewd material (by Nigerian standards). Of course with its single nude scene, lasting about 2 seconds, Aníkúlápó is wide off the mark in rivalling the epic series’ hypersexual nature, so it would be proper to expect that Kunle Afolayan would draw from other parts of the iconic series to live up to this tall comparison. This expectation, however, does not materialise.

The biggest of the film’s issues stems from the movie’s title. Aníkúlápó translates as “one who has death in his pocket”. It is the name given to Saro by the indigenes of his placeholder as his gift wins him fame and riches in Ojumo, but none of this comes until the film has crossed the halfway point. If this is to be assumed to be the primary storyline of movie, and it is, given that the movie is named as it is, then it becomes a head scratcher as to why we spend so long in Oyo, sitting through chieftaincy meetings and Arolake’s squabbles with co-wives at the palace when the main story was waiting to happen an hour and a half after. And it is not a case of a slow building plot line either, as none of these arcs prove truly instrumental to the movie’s core plot, and none of these characters would return for the final act. In fact, an entirely different subplot building in Oyo, involving threats of war from a neighbouring village is ditched completely when our characters and the story leave that town. A better option available to the filmmakers would have been to compress this first act – it doesn’t amount to much anyway – and give the primary storyline of Saro and his mystical power more room to shine.

Other questionable decisions abound, but hard as it might be, to ignore the flaws in Aníkúlápó’s story and instead focus on the worldbuilding around it will leave you as angry as Kunle Afolayan over the movie’s Oscar snub. A lot of effort has been put into its cinematography, and it shows. Beautiful scenery has been hailed above, but it deserves another mention. In the seconds between scenes when the camera takes in sweeping shots of nature and the village, you feel so immersed as to think that there is nothing else in the world but these ancient lands and the hopping peoples who live in it. To create a properly immersive experience, the right sound and music are required, and Aníkúlápó makes these its strengths as well. With a score composed entirely of songs in Yoruba language, each one placed appropriately in the proper scene to ramp up emotions, Aníkúlápó’s music adds another layer of flesh to its cinematography, and will aid in drowning the audience into the world it has created.

Not least in the elements needed to sell this fictional world are the performances of the actors themselves. Kunle Remi is in fine form here, portraying Saro’s humble beginnings and his eventual majesty with equal verve. Bimbo Ademoye delivers a perfectly adequate performance too, so it is no fault of theirs that they are not able to sell their romance properly, it is written too quickly to draw the audience along.

Supporting actors on either side of the Oyo-Ojumo border put in great shifts, notable of which are Sola Sobowale’s role as a pioneer of Sugar-mummies and Hakeem Kae Kazeem as Oba Aderoju, Ojumo’s king.

Kunle Afolayan’s narrative choice of sidelining into flashbacks what could have been interesting aspects of story is questionable at best, as is the slow motion employed at Saro and Arolake’s first meeting in place of actual dialogue. All said, Aníkúlápó is gorgeous in sight and sound, and a genteel, accurate depiction of ancient Yoruba culture, and barring poor choices in storywriting and pacing, it is a big step forward for Nollywood towards excellence.