That
Izu Ojukwu’s excellent film, ’76 clinched
five awards at the 2017 Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards a week ago – notably
earning laurels for best movie and best director – is just reward for one of the
most ambitious projects to emerge from Nollywood recently. Starring Ramsey
Nouah and Rita Dominic and working off a screenplay by Emmanuel Okomanyi, with
a $3 million budget, ’76 was a gamble
that paid off and bodes well for the prospects of new generation film makers.
The
movie’s strongest point is its rigorous attention to historical detail. It adroitly
simulates the sights and sounds of the mid 1970s, through an uncommon diligence
in assimilating the right period props and an intelligent use of historical
footage. The viewer is transported back in time to an era now increasingly dim
in the national memory. By the time, the movie ended to the strings of Bongos
Ikwue’s Cockcrow at Dawn, I was positively nostalgic. Part political thriller,
part romantic drama, it is the story of a military intelligence officer, Captain
Joseph Dewah (Nouah) who is drawn into the conspiracy to topple the Head of State,
General Murtala Muhammed.
A
key subplot involves his relationship with Suzie (Rita Dominic). As an Igbo,
her family, represented by her incensed father and a pesky younger brother, are
opposed to her relationship with Dewah, a Middle Belter, who fought on the
other side during the civil war and for whom she is now pregnant. Their relationship,
fraught with filial mistrust, and burdened by Dewah’s own thoroughbred dedication
to duty and his compulsive secrecy, is also a metaphor for the nation’s
post-war reconciliation. It is a microcosmic human experiment interrogating the
possibility that love can surmount the constant pressure of bitter memories and
inter-ethnic antipathies harvested from the grim experience of the civil war.
Shot
on location in Mokola Barracks, Ibadan, ’76
realistically portrays the sometimes claustrophobic nature of life in the army
barracks; the altercations and rivalries that flare up from having too many
alpha male egos in close proximity and the ease with which enemies are made in
such circumstances. It also accurately captures the atmospheric dread, mutual
paranoia and recrimination that pervade the barracks when a coup plot has been
uncovered and its terrible impact on families, especially women – wives,
sisters, lovers – who pay a price for the (mis)adventures of the men they love.
In
one poignant scene, a fellow army wife tells Suzie that marrying a soldier is
akin to accepting to serve the nation along with him. The costs and
consequences of the call of duty are shared by the spouses. This is a truth I have
seen seared into the eyes of widows that lost their husbands to the lethal inquisitions
that followed abortive coups during the military era.
As
one whose family carries the stamp of the failed 1976 coup d’état, I can
testify that the movie masterfully projects the thin line between conspiratorial
involvement and being in the wrong place and the right time; how the utter caprice
of circumstantial evidence and an official vengeful disregard for establishing
guilt beyond all reasonable doubt could mean either death by firing squad or an
eleventh hour reprieve. In this sense, ’76
is a reminder of a sad chapter of our history when good soldiers were lost not
to wars but to insidious vendettas and miscarriages of military justice.
The
era of military rule was a bloody episode of Nigeria’s odyssey not just because
of the costly civil war but because of the cycle of coups that inevitably followed
the military’s incursion into politics. We lost some of our best and brightest
in the vortex of violence sprung open by the vaulting ambitions of soldiers who
often saw themselves as messianic revolutionaries. The military itself arguably
was the institution that was most subverted by its political adventurism. As ’76 shows, treasonous conspiracies
destroyed the camaraderie between soldiers and ripped families asunder. Warriors
who had fought side by side in wartime, ironically, became enemies because of
the intrigues of peace-time coup-plotting.
’76
is not a political thriller in the order of Eddie Ugbomah’s 1983 film, The Death of a Black President which
focuses on the political, ideological and mythic significance of Murtala. If Ugbomah’s
film deals with the allegedly grand imperialist conspiracy that ultimately
consumed the Head of State, Izu Ojukwu’s take deals with the dramatic
consequences of such plots on the lives of those further down the totem pole. These
are the people who are often unremembered and anonymous. They are the unknown
soldiers and nameless civilians and the collateral damage consumed by the
internecine coup-plotting and conspiratorial subversion that defined the
military era. ’76 is a political
thriller told from a compellingly human angle.
The
success of ’76 heralds fresh
cinematic possibilities for this generation. Much of our history is uncharted
territory and the urgent task of acquainting Nigerians with their own antiquity
cannot be left to educationists alone. Film makers can wield their craft and
use pop-culture at large as a vital history teaching aid. ’76 also showed what is possible when the government and armed
forces collaborate with the creative sectors of civil society. There are many
stories that should be told and such collaboration bodes well for the industry.
This does not, of course, mean that Nollywood should reduce itself to the
propaganda arm of the state. But it does mean film makers have a role to play
in the all-encompassing enterprise of nation-building and the government should
give them all the support they need
Finally,
’76 marks the coming of age of a
cinematic movement that might be described as Nollywood 2.0. Its first shots
were fired by Kunle Afolayan’s The
Figurine and October 1st.
Movies like Steve Gukas’s 93 Days
which deal with serious subject matter are on the same creative arc. We have
come a long way from the pioneering days of Living
in Bondage. A new generation of film makers is now moving away from the
tropes, clichés and stereotypes that have long inhibited Nollywood. They are
positively obsessed with high production values, and intent on playing for
higher stakes and on grander stages, is keen to push the boundaries of
storytelling. It has been long in coming.
Images sourced from
reportsafrique.com
pulse.ng
guardian.ng