ktravula – a travelogue!

The Fiddler on the Roof

I have chanced upon a large collection of very old movies some of which I should have seen a long while ago but couldn’t because of inaccessibility. As much as I can, I will tell you my views on them, and the impact they had on me (for those that do make an impact, that is). The last week has been a tour of Guys and Dolls, a movie featuring Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando (before he became the large framed guy we grew up knowing). The 1955 musical is famous for being the only movie in which the two famous men starred together, and the only one in which Marlon Brando sang. The story is nuanced and playful, but very entertaining, and timeless.

The other new memorable film I saw, also a musical, is The Fiddler on the Roof, a powerful story of family, love, tradition and the departure therefrom, and the story of the Jewish persecution in Tsarist Russia. I am always inevitably drawn to stories that have real life historical background because they constantly remind that we’re not just watching a movie, but learning from the story of a people that lived during a trying period in the larger history of the world. This story, based on the life of Tevye, a poor Jewish man with five daughters, is set in 1905 and tells of the endurance and transience of tradition, the strength of love’s bond, the perseverance of humanity in the face of persecution, the conviviality of family life, and the presence of hope in every dire situation. It was particularly interesting for me to discover that the persecution of Jews in Russia did not start during the Second World War but had been there far much earlier. And when you see a whole village trooping out on their feet in the cold winter out of a place where they’d lived for generations into the outside world to places unknown, your heart breaks. Add to this a letting go of a father of her daughter who had abandoned the faith and family tradition by marrying a Christian secretly, then you get a scene of denouement with a powerful emotional finish.

I can’t tell you more of any of them without letting out the plot, but I must strongly recommend them for whomever is interested in musicals, history, love, laughter and a few teardrops. You may also come off with a strong love for a few of the songs in The Fiddler on the Roof. My favourite is “Sunrise, Sunset.” and “If I were a rich man”, but you may also like “Tradition” and “Matchmaker.” As for Guys and Dolls, watch out for “Luck be a Lady” and a few other jazz classics.

Ten stars out of ten.

Casablanca

There are very many memorable scenes in this movie which I was seeing for the very first time but these two stand out. One is the emotionally charged scene of utmost patriotism in the face of danger and oppression. The German soldiers were singing Die Wacht am Rhein and Victor Lazlo comes to overshadow it with the beautiful and heartfelt rendition of La Marseillaise that would make the head of anyone swell, French or not. A very defining scene in fact. I couldn’t get enough of it. (The irony of this scene to a viewer like me lies, of course, in the fact that both the German and the French folks were engaged in that phychological fight for superiority while occupying Morocco, a country that technically belonged to neither of them.)

The other is a very tender love scene full of nostalgia and affection. A black man (perhaps from America, having fleed from the discrimination of the South) played a moving slow rendition of a now favourite song. It was my pleasure to discover on iTunes today that the song As Time Goes By has been remade after the movie by greats like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong among many others. Even Kenny G did an instrumental version. A great song by many standards, and the movie gives a very strong emotional background to its appreciation. Play it Sam.

Full of laughter, drama, intrigue, action, romance and bravery, with very superb acting by Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid Casablanca has suddenly become one of my most favourite movies of all time. A wonder I’m seeing it now just for the very first time.

Arugba

Set against the background of a corrupt society, the story of the votary virgin designated to “carry the calabash” for one last time before settling down into matrimony is enticing on its face. Add to that the intrigues of puberty and University life, the corrupt and often lecherous leaders (many of who have real life equivalents in Nigerian politics), historical figures in short cameos, and a multi-award winning director known for equally engaging films, and you have a winner, right? Yes, if you are a skillful playwright looking for a nice plot to use in writing the next bestselling play. No, if all you want is a screen flick that tries very hard to please everyone (UNICEF, Cultural experts, Movie buffs, Local language activists, suckers for love stories laced with music, and pretty much everyone else).

What I’m trying to say here, of course, is that I wasn’t much impressed with the movie except with the super acting by the seasoned actors (Lere Paimo, Kareem Adepoju, Bukky Wright, Peter Badejo, and the new Bukola Awoyemi), the song Afi fila perin , the major plot (which is the cleansing of a town as tied to the symbolic act of the virgin votary), and the picture quality. Everything else seemed distracting, especially the flashbacks. The sub-plots looked like poorly-handled attempts to situate everything in this quasi-imaginary world in which the events took place in the events of our real life. We see Obasanjo. We see Bola Ige. We see Abiola. We didn’t need to see them, but we did. Nothing else in the overall plot of the movie prepared or compensated us for the distraction. And even the love story which is the major subplot did not always convince. It surely didn’t live up to the standard of Ajani and Asake in O Le Ku handled by the same director.

The flashbacks were the main distraction. I did not see the point in keeping the details kidnapping attempt on Adetutu till the end. It should have been enlightening then, but it wasn’t, because we had already consoled ourselves – having seen her hale and hearty – that she had already survived in one piece; and the minor intrigue of the women who wanted her removed on the rumour that she had been raped did not really impress. What about the king’s inglorious offer to Adetutu earlier in the beginning? We didn’t know much about it until the end, for no justifiable reason. Other distractions included the sub-sub plot of the Islam and Christian adherents at the beginning and the end, Adetutu’s jealous rival (played by Kafat Kafidipe), the Oral Rehydration Therapy that eventually never saved a child from dying, the jealous housewives in the king’s palace, the spirits seen at the beginning and at the end coming out of the (supposed) Osun river to play with Adetutu (when we know for a fact that the story is not science fiction) among many others. I’m an ardent fan of Mainframe, but here, I see only minor resurrections of what we liked about Saworoide, Koseegbe, Campus Queen, and even O Le Ku. But that’s where the love ends. At the end of the movie, I did not stand, smile, ponder and send a text to my friends to go get a copy. I merely rewound it to listen to the song Afi Fila Perin many times again, then go to bed.

Now, this is what I suspect: there were too many consumer constituencies to cater for by this offering. And in the end, it ruined what could have been the best story since Death and the King’s Horseman (which is not even a movie yet, as it should be) – a classic meeting of tradition with “civilization” and the fallouts thereof. So many possibilities… Maybe if Tunde Kelani had written the story himself, or at least passed it through the hands of Akin Ishola, Bamiji Ojo, Wole Soyinka, or Bayo Faleti…

There, my KTrotten Tomatoes! Two stars out of five. Okay, maybe three. Maybe.

Brokeback Mountain

I find it interesting that the historic “Proposition 8” ban on gay marriages in the American State of California was struck down on the same day that I’d plan to blog about this movie that I was seeing for the first time. Brokeback Mountain (2005) is a very moving (but to me a little discomforting) story of two men whose friendship evolved into something more and lasted for a lifetime, withstanding even the challenge of their individual marriages and separate heterosexual lives. I doubt that bisexual love has been depicted on the screen with this level of boldness before or since Brokeback. Wikipedia compares it to the great romance stories like Romeo and Juliet and Titanic.

I had also recently seen a German movie called Aimee & Jaguar (1999) set in the Second World War, a true life story of an “abominable” (by standards of the time) relationship between a German woman, wife of a German officer, and a Jewish woman. Adapted from a book which contained photos of the many letters shared between the two, and official correspondences post WWII, the movie was remarkable not only because of the same sex nature of the relationship but because of the way the story depicts the love within the dangerous power relations and politics of the time. I know I could have enjoyed it better if my German was as good as that of the actors. Translations didn’t help much.

Both films – given to me by the same person who felt that I needed to update my tolerance credibility by exposing myself to the two prominent sides of the controversial coin – were refreshing in their own way. They both ended up very sad, yet moving, with very affecting moments, good acting and nice picture. Brokeback Mountain features Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and it was nominated for the most Oscars at the 78th Academy Awards. It won three but lost “Best Picture” to Crash.

Two Movies

Gone With the Wind and Glory are two sides of the same coin in the civil war history of the United States. Well, not really. One of them is a story that glorified slavery in some way, or at best treated it like just another part of life. The other was a feature on a real life event of an attempt to resolve the institution of slavery among other political differences in the country.

Gone with the Wind is a beautiful story of love, gallantry, bravery and honour. Bella loved Rhett, but Rhett loved Scarlett. Scarlett however loved Ashley, and Ashley loved his wife. Scarlett never got over her love until it was too late. A very moving ending to a story that spanned the period of the American civil war.

Glory is a moving story of honour, bravery, pride and a tragic military campaign of the first “coloured” regiment of the Union army in an attempt to take over the confederate Fort Wagner. Brilliantly told, the true life story never failed to rouse emotion at very memorable intervals. And Denzel Washington won his Academy Award as a supporting actor.

I can’t explain why I have been watching movies about the American Civil War in the past days, but I can say that it’s been worth it. It is filling a few gaps in my history lesson. And it raises a few questions too, why it was important to black men to enlist in the Union army to fight the confederates when all they would get was death, or at best a chance to kill. And how those capable of keeping slaves in servitude and fighting to entrench the evil system could be capable of gallantry, honour and love. Gone With The Wind manages to elicit my empathy for the Old South, and Glory managed to arouse my anger at slavery, war, and inequality. And all I learnt at the end of watching them both is the power of stories.

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