QUEEN OF KATWE

In my view, the 3 major constituents of the arts/entertainment are Literature,

Music and Cinema (the last of which includes television). Of the trio, literature
considers itself as superior and usually assumes an uppity disposition especially
when being compared with its cousins.

This would explain the outcry from the literary world when a musician, Bob Dylan,
won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. To lesser degrees, you can sense the
uppitiness when Chimamanda Adichie tried to distinguish her feminist credentials
from Beyonce’s, and in the typical adult refrain to younger minds to turn off the
television and read a book instead.

But the truth is; as powerful as literature is as an art form, sometimes;

cinema/television proves to be an even more powerful art form that transports
you to never-never land with such breathtaking momentum, it leaves you on an
almost permanent high for days. Thus far this year, Disney’s Queen of Kwate has
proved itself a strong contender for the most exciting feel-good movie of the
year.

Queen of Kwarte starts out briefly in the present before taking us on a series of
flashbacks that lasts almost the entire length of its 2-hour plus running time. A
widow, Harriet Nakku (Lupita Nyong’o), lives in Katwe (a Ugandan slum) with her
4 children trying to eke out a living selling maize.

Her second daughter, Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) chances upon a local chess club
coached by Robert Katende (David Oyelowo ) and thus began the journey that
would transform their lives forever and transport the audience on a roller-coaster
ride of emotions.

The slum that is Katwe as captured in the movie exemplifies the poverty porn in
Africa that excites the West and draws our ire every time it is splashed in western
media. However, there is no amount of ire from us that will change the fact that
slums like Katwe represent everyday reality for a disturbing number of Africans
across the continent.
The silver lining in this dark cloud, however, is that ( as was obvious in the BBC
documentary, Welcome to Lagos) Katwe may be a slum but in its inhabitants, you
see a tenacious hold on life and a will to survive that defies the sub-human living
conditions they call home.

Where kids from affluent western societies would probably require a lifetime of
therapy to get over the physical and psychological damage of such living
conditions, the children of Katwe flick the dust off their shoulder and face life in
full combat mode. Their childhood may have been stolen from them but their
dignity and resilience are their shield and sword in the eternal battle between
them and their hard knock life.

Their passionate participation in missionary run football games and chess club is
their collective middle finger and bring-it-on-dare to life. Slum children that
should ordinarily be handicapped by a lack of formal education develop an
unusual proficiency in the highly cerebral game of chess, and run circles around
uppity city kids who have a clear advantage over them both in formal education
and elitist standard of living.

A slum-dwelling girl who made good in the elitist world of chess is the primary
theme of Queen of Katwe. But the movie also dealt with other sub-themes which
it pulled off with the ease and mastery of a Master chess player.

There was the sub-theme of single-parenthood and the challenges it engenders

on the surviving spouse saddled with the responsibility of raising a family by
herself. There was the expected fall out sub-themes from this; the involuntary
child-labour that ensues when a single parent has to co-opt her underage children
as unpaid labour in her maize selling business and the inevitable rebellion of the
older child and her eventual descent into prostitution/cohabitiation.

There was the sub-theme of class war and the related theme of bullying. Even
patriarchy reared its head where a clearly better chess player like Phiona had to
apologise to a boy for beating him at chess, and where she had to doubt her own
proficiency by believing that the champion chess player at an elitist school threw
the game just so she could win.
The story of Queen of Katwe is a simple and straight forward one that was very
well told. But by far the best part of Queen of Katwe was the performances of the
characters.

As Phiona, newcomer, Madina Nalwanga was an excellent choice to portray the

character. Her demure and self-effacing disposition starting out as she discovered
the world of chess was endearing and got you rooting for her instantly. You could
see the gradual transformation in her confidence as the movie progressed and
she became more proficient at the game.

You empathized with her when upon a successful return from a chess competition
in Sudan; she no longer felt an accepting affinity with her surroundings and living
conditions. Where her mother saw arrogance, you saw one who had tasted of
something other than what she had hitherto been used to, and who now realized
there was more out there and had resolved to not be content with what she has
and has been used to.

In Queen of Katwe; David Oyelowo, as Robert Katende, again proved himself to be

a talented and resourceful actor. The ease with which he plays varied character
and accents is a testament of his proficiency as a seasoned actor. As Katende, he
pulled off a very believable Uganda/East African accent. He portrayed Katende
with the right amount of restraint and passion required of one who is torn
between pursuing self-advancement and providing for one’s family and a passion
and commitment to others to whom one feels and has assumed a personal
responsibility for.

But by far, the best performance in Queen of Katwe was by Lupita Nyong’o. I must
confess that I was completely put off by her best supporting actress Oscar win for
12 years a slave and the whole Nyongo’asm that ensued. I felt Chinwetel Ejiofor
was more deserving of an Oscar nod for 12 years. I was even more put off by the
fact that she seemed to be more popular as a fashionista than as an actress. Her
unimpressive blink-and-you-will-miss-it appearance in the Liam Neeson actioner
Non-stop put me off even more.
In Queen of Katwe, I finally had my very first Nyongo’asm and it was a long and
enduring one like a pig’s orgasm reputedly is! In Queen of Katwe, Lupita did not
act. She embodied and became the character of Harriet Nakku. Her facial
expressions alone would make an entire week’s worth of zikoko memes.

Great acting goes beyond reciting beautifully written lines in an impassioned

monologue or exchanges. Sometimes, great acting comes from pulling off the
barely noticeable nuances of the character an actor is portraying. It could the
words said or left unsaid. It could be facial expressions that convey deep emotions
more eloquently than words could. It could be the body language that transforms
an entire performance.

Lupita’s role in Queen of Kwate was in supporting capacity but she was clearly the
star of the movie. There is the stereotype image of the African mother as a
resourceful, strong, passionate and loving mother hen. She will move mountains
to fend for her children and she will run through hell to rescue her child. With
equal passion, she will turn out a renegade child who had stretched her patience
to the limit, and will welcome same child with open arms that will melt your
heart.

In Queen of Kwate, Lupita was a living embodiment of this stereotypical African

mother. You saw her strength in the scene where Phiona rushed home aboard a
motor bike her brother who had been knocked down in an accident. And in the
scene where she waded through muddy flood water to rescue her baby son from
drowning. You saw her no-nonsense attitude and imperviousness to emotional
blackmail when she replies her rebellious older daughter “I don’t need your
forgiveness. I need you to sell maize to feed your brothers”.

You saw her mother hen attitude in the scene when she tells Oyelowo’s Robert
Katende “These children you call our children. They are not yours. They are mine”.
You see her resourcefulness in the scene in the hospital where she a pulls off the
drip from her injured son’s hand to escape when she was informed to go settle
the treatment bills.
You see a mother’s painful but steely resolve when she tells the doctor to stitch
up her injured son’s wounds even where he says they had run out of painkillers.
You see a mother’s resolve not to break down before her child in the scene her
son informs her that Phiona is still living with Katende and she pulls a cloth across
the clothes line to prevent her son from seeing the tears welling up in her eyes.

Another stand-out scene was the one in which she spurns the amorous overtures
of a trader to whom she had gone to sell of her jewelry to raise cash to fund her
daughter’s passion for chess. That scene was so beautifully shot. It left you with a
will-she-or-will-she not dilemma as she considered his offer of One hundred
thousand shillings if she would accompany him on a date. Lupita put on an acting
clinic as she seemed to lean in whilst considering his tempting offer. You make a
triumphant whoop whoop for her superior moral code when she replies “I will
take the Twelve thousand shillings”. Lupita was an acting God in that scene!

For its 2-hour plus running time, Lupita was mine, yours and every African child’s
mother growing up. She was the African mother without borders. In Queen of
Kwate, Lupita gave a performance that should earn her another best supporting
actress win at next year’s Oscars.

And just as Leonardo Di Caprio’s long awaited win for The Revenant this year was
more for all the times the Oscars had undeservedly overlooked him despite the
impressive body of work he had built up over the years (than for The Revenant),
Lupita’s win next year (should it happen) will be for a deserving performance this
year and to assuage concerns that her win for 12 years a slave was more about
Hollywood’s condescending tokenistic gesture towards inclusiveness than her
actual performance in 12 years a slave.

The only things I found off putting in the movie were the rainbow coloured
graphics that flashed across the screen to announce the flashbacks. They seemed
to detract from the seriousness of the movie. Then, there was also the fact that
the choice of soundtrack in the first half of the movie did not really seem to
connect with the somber mood of the movie. Davido’s Skelewu playing in the
background during a chess competition was not only an inappropriate choice of
soundtrack but it was also distracting.
At some point in the movie, I had wished they had used the local Ugandan
language in the movie but with English subtitles. But as the movie progressed, I
was glad that it was in English.

There is something about the union of the English language and Ugandan/East
African accent and the deliciousness (and sexiness) that ensues that ravishes the
aural palates. At one time, it’s like the fingers of a Spanish guitarist delicately
strumming the strings of a Spanish guitar. At other times, it’s like an encounter
between a sexy but unexposed village siren and a supposedly exposed city boy
but unwise to the experience and intricacies of village life.

Hollywood is the universal symbol of Western cinema. Bollywood assumes that

moniker for Indian cinema. Hong Kong, arguably, is the capital of Asian martial
arts cinema. Nigeria’s Nollywood stands as the putative symbol of African cinema.

However, whilst Hollywood, Bollywood and Asian martial arts films have for long
enjoyed massive crossover appeal in cultures and audiences different from their
own, Nollywood, to a large extent, appeals to people of Nigerian and African
decent and has not enjoyed much of the crossover appeal as the others.

It is my hope that as Slumdog Millionaire (albeit a British film) in 2008 won

crossover appeal for Bollywood, Queen of Kwate (albeit a Disney film) will attract
a rethink in Nollywood on how to properly tell African stories (without infecting it
with puerile pseudo-Hollywood affectations), and ultimately win crossover appeal
from a global audience for African cinema.

Queen of Kwate is not so much a Disney Cinderella story as it is an African Simbi-

rella story. It is an affirmation that despite humanity’s diverse background, our
stories and experiences have a resonating universal appeal. It proves that you can
take the Disney story mould from Hollywood, plant it in the heart of Africa and
find a story that not only fits the mould perfectly but will also run the audience
through the same gamut of emotions you experience when watching a typical
Disney film. Queen of Kwate is Lupita Nyongo’s coming out story as an actress
post her Oscar award.