[blockquote align=”centre” author=”EfikoScore: 5.2/10″ style=”font-size: 30px”] This should be Femi Branch’s A-list ticket. But the film’s screenplay is unfocused, the cinematography often banal, the editing frequently basic, and the direction slack. [/blockquote]
The opening scene of House Of Ga’a tells us that this isn’t a film thinking too much about verisimilitude. The scene is one of battle between Oyo and the Nupe but you don’t have to be a disciple of war to see that both sides are equipped with weapons made of something insufficiently ferrous. Sure, blood is spilled and spurted, and the sound effects urge you to believe that a host of combative extras are meeting their end at knife point, but your eyes are not deceiving you. It’s not weapons those warriors are carrying; it’s furniture.
The scene is set in Western Africa centuries ago but you get people slicing and stabbing other people with moves clearly inspired by action films. Move their yaaaa! and acknowledgement nods to the modern Hollywood blockbuster and it’ll fit right in. One man is instructed to kill and does so with a twirl as though he’s in an Asian martial arts flick. He might as well be. The new Yoruba epic has been unable to create its own fight idiom. It’s a major failing of the subgenre that extends across the Nollywood’s subdivisions. The industry has failed repeatedly to produce decent fight choreography and scenes of violence.
Mercifully, the battle ends and the story truly begins. It’s a victory for Oyo and for Ga’a (Femi Branch), the warlord politically savvy enough to know that he should be the one to deliver news of the triumph to the Alaafin, king of Oyo. When he returns home, he gets a title. He will become Bashorun.
This decision would turn out to be a deadly one for the king; the new Bashorun holds an ancient grudge revealed in a flashback. A few beats later, in one of the film’s truly cinematic twist of events, the king would commit suicide and the Ga’a ascendancy would continue via variations on that theme: king displeases Ga’a, Ga’s dispatches king. Soon enough, he is referred to as the kingmaker and king breaker.
In one of the film’s memorable scenes, a candidate seeking the Bashorun’s support is told the increasingly untenable things he would have to acquiesce to for the throne. As he grumbles, Ga’a simply and sternly asks, “Are you satisfied or you’re not?” There is only one answer. If you want the throne, this is the man you say yes to, no matter the demand. Little wonder, he comes to demand that a king bows before him—and not just figuratively.
If you are familiar with the story of Bashorun Ga’a, you know how it ends. Even so, there still is some value in watching this adaptation. As everyone knows, since the success of Kings of Thieves two years ago, Nollywood has been shaking Yoruba history, hoping that it yields coins. Netflix has been paying attention. Last year, the streamer released Jagun Jagun. At least one of the stars of that picture appears in this one.
To play Ga’a, director Bolanle Austen-Peters deploys the services of Femi Branch, an actor known for fury and brash haughtiness in his youth. In his older form, those qualities have settled somewhat into gravity even as his body has attained a robust portliness, a physical composition that may be right for an aggressive elite of the 17th/18th century that we are told this tale took place in—although this seems like a narrative faux pas since the narrator is someone alive at the time. How often does a person referring to an event in his lifetime say it took place in so and so century? Maybe it’s his ghost talking.
In any case, this is the Femi Branch Show. He has gotten the kind of role that sweeps awards as it takes its actor to genuine A-lister-dom. But there’s a problem.
House Of Ga’a isn’t very good. Its screenplay is unfocused, the cinematography is mostly banal, the editing is frequently basic, and the direction is slack. So many scenes fade to black and scenes with the potential to look great never do. There is, however, one smart editing choice in a scene that ends in two deaths. And there are some great-looking visual effects, some of which are immediately undercut by being onscreen too long. An example: A king gets bitten by a snake in one snappy movement that is good enough…until we are invited to watch the snake slither over the body, a needless decision that gives the CGI game away.
The superfluity in House of Ga’a isn’t limited to such scenes. It extends to the plot, which is juiced to a 2-hour runtime. There is a semi-comic love subplot with Ga’a and a Nupe slave, there’s a tragic love subplot featuring a Ga’a offspring (Mike Afolarin), there’s a family drama between Ga’a and a feckless sibling (played reasonably well by Lateef Adedimeji), and the main story of Ga’a’s rise as narrated by that lovesick Ga’a offspring can be thought of as his own coming-of-age tale. These subplots aren’t all interesting. Instead of a tight tale, we get a bloated screenplay.
Perhaps the deployment of a narrator and films that are, in essence, elaborate flashbacks are quirks of the filmmakers. Why? Well, because the broader narrative structure of House of Ga’a is pretty similar to that of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the other film that unites Tunde Babalola as writer and Austen-Peters as director. In both films, a frame story is used. An eponymous character’s life and times is embedded in a smaller story. It can be a nifty trick. But, on this evidence, the quirk needs to be rethought or abandoned.
So, this isn’t the finest hour for the Austen-Peters-Babalola arrangement. But their star, Femi Branch, may yet find his name among nominees when it’s time for awards next year, but it won’t be because he produced a grand performance in a spectacular film in 2024. It would be because he played the titular role in a highly visible project supported by the almighty brand called Netflix.
