For its 41st edition, the Toronto International Film Festival has selected Lagos, Nigeria as the focus of the City to City program. This programming strand shines a spotlight on the creative energy of one city, with past selections including London, Seoul and, controversially, Tel Aviv. Lagos is a savvy choice on the part of TIFF, as the Nigerian film industry — or Nollywood, as it is affectionately called — is one of the world’s most prolific national cinemas yet remains mostly unknown to the cineastes that frequent the festival circuit. The City to City selection evades the tokenism that informs most major film festivals’ efforts to include lesser-known cinemas by illuminating the depth of Nigerian cinema: first-time and veteran filmmakers, male and female directors and a variety of genres and subject matter are among the features selected. Izu Ojukwu’s “76” could be considered the centerpiece of this year’s lineup; its director is a Nollywood auteur and his latest work has been years in the making.
A period epic of sorts, “76” orbits around the attempted coup of Nigerian’s military government in (you guessed it) 1976, with the wounds of the Biafran Civil War still fresh in the characters’ consciousness. Contrary to the scale and stakes suggested by this setting, the film limits itself predominantly to one locale — a military barracks — and focuses on the experience of a newly married couple, Joseph Dewa (Ramsey Nouah) and his pregnant wife Suzy (Rita Dominic). Joseph, against his wishes, becomes aware of a conspiracy to assassinate five high-ranking officials who figured prominently in the civil war and becomes torn between his obligations to his friends, his family and his country. The Dewas’ privileged position on the barracks, somehow both separated from and at the center of the country’s points of contention, affords them all the luxuries that one could hope for in the mid-‘70s, and “76” breaks up the domestic drama and political intrigue with indulgent period fashion and music. The second half of the film takes on a more serious tone, as Joseph’s attempts to stay neutral only take on unforeseen consequences.
Nigerian films are predominantly shot quickly and cheaply on digital formats and are marketed directly to a home video audience, both in Nigeria and abroad. With that in mind, Ojukwu’s decision to shoot “76” on film (16mm or 35mm, depending on what you read — it wasn’t clear from the digital projection) adds a number of interesting wrinkles to the impression the picture makes. Of course, the expense of celluloid immediately marks the movie as a kind of Nollywood epic, beyond the budget and scale normally afforded in Nigeria’s film industry.
As an aesthetic choice, the properties of celluloid blend better with the archival footage that is employed at key moments. For example, the black-and-white vérité staging of the assassination plot — the turning point of the film — compliments the later archival footage of the crowds that watch the public execution of the conspirators, which is intercut with inserts of Suzy. On the other hand, the final digital master of the film is plagued with print damage and soft shots that occasionally slip out of focus. This could be considered an amateur quality — it is certainly distracting — though more to the point serves as a reminder to the audience that “76” is still a Nollywood production and is held to the corresponding standards.
To speak of the other technical and affective qualities of the film — performances, pace and editing, sound design — also requires a certain contextual frame, as it becomes all to easy to dismiss the film by comparing it to the usual arthouse suspects that fill out TIFF’s slate (if “76” were to be considered arthouse at all, which it really isn’t). The striking first two shots, of Joseph running through a field with harsh red optical light followed by a chiaroscuro image of the character in a jail cell, illustrate Ojukwu’s pop aesthetic range. It’s too bad that almost every shot afterwards is far more routine.
Likewise for the editing rhythms, as most conversations play out in tedious shot/reverse shot while others are jarringly interrupted, so blatantly that it comes across as an intentional distancing device. Dialogue is oftentimes buried in the sound mix beneath a record playing in the scene or a piece of score. In at least one instance, the impression is that Joseph and Suzy’s banal morning conversation is, by implication, less interesting than the composition playing on the soundtrack. At the very least, Ojukwu tries to play to the strength in each moment, which sometimes isn’t what was shot on set. Normally, that strength is his actors, with Nouah carrying the dramatic weight for the first half of the film and Dominic in the latter part. A blowup between the main couple as they argue over their respective in-laws (who exist on opposite political poles) serves as a highlight; the acting is more attuned, the lighting more acute and the shot held longer than usual.
As a centerpiece of the City to City program, “76” takes upon itself a great burden, both to satisfy the expectations of scale and pathos for a film of its genre (regardless of origin) but also to impress the virtues and charms of Nollywood onto a festival audience that is largely unfamiliar with Nigerian cinema. Rough around the edges but buoyed by the chemistry of its central performers, Izu Ojukwu’s latest film serves as a mostly memorable and occasionally unexpected melodramatic retelling of an important moment in the history of this West African country. And, as the most distinctive national cinemas and pop culture industries are apt to do, “76” is the kind of film for which its quirks, not deficiencies, leave an enticing mark on the audience. [B-]
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