There is more to the medium than the message. The Woman King is a case in point
It’s a peculiar sign of our times that filmmakers feel the need to damn the public for having the nerve not to praise their work. In years past, a film’s success was dependent on its reception with audiences. While some gems were lost on initial release only to be rediscovered as cult classics, flops were more often than not totted up to bad luck or poor execution. But now the film-going public are those at fault.
Leaving aside Amazon’s complaints about the altogether chilly reception of its dud series, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, there is another ready example of filmmakers’ derision of the public in actress Viola Davis’s preemptive condemnation of the public vis-á-vis her latest film, The Woman King.
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and starring Davis herself, the historical drama takes place in early nineteenth-century West Africa, where the small(ish) Kingdom of Dahomey struggles to free itself of its former masters, the crumbling Oyo Empire, their European allies and the slave trade that both facilitate.
Davis stars as Nanisca, the fierce and cowrie shell-studded but troubled general of the Dahomey King’s all-female personal bodyguard – the Agojie, known in contemporary European accounts as the Dahomey Amazons.
As the commander of this legendary body of warriors, Nanisca is a key adviser to King Ghezo (John Boyega). As she fights to defend the borders of her beleaguered people, she councils the King to abandon the slave trade in favour of more ethical roads to prosperity (which he does), all the while navigating a traumatic past that saw her captured and repeatedly assaulted by the men who put her in chains.
The flashbacks to Nanisca’s time in captivity and to the moments when her captors assaulted her are delivered with a staggering brutality of style that conveys all the trauma it was intended to.
The film presents an image of a layered and complex political entity in pre-colonial Africa and an, at times, compelling insight into the female-empowering culture and world of Dahomey’s women warriors.
And though it is perfectly watchable as as film, the inevitable and, needless to say, politically moral victory Naniscar attains is only possible because of the film’s use of history, around which director Gina Prince-Bythewood maneuvers with gymnastic flexibility.
Where Ghezo (a real character drawn from the annals) he did unshackle his kingdom from its vassalage to the Oyo Empire, he continued to trade slaves until his death in 1859, three decades after the events of the film. Indeed, he was helped to the throne by a Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa, sometimes known as “the greatest slave trader” of them all.
What are at best baby steps in the right direction, are blown into full frontal (and triumphal) abolition in the film.
After Naniscar and her women warriors destroy the slaving barracoons of a European-run port in the film, John Boyega (Ghezo) makes a triumphant speech to a crowd assembled in his palace about the majesty of Dahomey culture and the virtue of their leaving the ranks of their oppressors. He goes on to say: “The Europeans and Americans have seen that if you wish to hold people in chains, you must convince them that they are meant to be chained.”
Cue rapturous applause from the joyous throng.
As uplifting as it is, this fabricated victory is a hollow one.
True, The Woman King is far from the first film to take liberties with fact. Take Mel Gibson’s medieval Scotathon Braveheart or Ridley Scott’s swords and sandals epic Gladiator. Both have been repeatedly compared to the African historical drama in the weeks since its release.
While the first is just as far-fetched if a lot sillier than The Woman King, not so Gladiator. Scott’s characters may stray from the path of history but they retain their essence. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus were as you would expect them to be – pensive and megalomaniacal. Furthermore, the film’s consolidation of Stoic thought exemplified in its main character Maximus gives it a justifying philosophical depth.
By contrast, the manipulation of history throughout The Woman King is different, however: it is wish fulfilment. It is a political retelling of history that permits the victims of the past to be their own liberators.
Nanisca is a heroine but one whose moral victory is only achieved through historical sleight of hand. Her story is one which is more striking for what it is saying than for how it says it.
Which brings us to Davis’s preemptive strike on the public. In an interview shortly before the film’s release she addressed the public, stating: “if you don’t come see [The Woman King] then you’re sending a message that black women cannot lead the box office globally.”
It looks like a cheap shot – watch this film or be branded a racist, a sexist one at that – but it isn’t as cheap as it looks. In the preamble to this killer line, she explains that Hollywood understands “green” (dollars) above all else. To bring equity to black actors, directors and writers, her argument suggests, the viewing public must pay up.
But intention will never be confused with competence. The public aren’t the shucks that filmmakers seem to think they are.
The political consciousness that has gripped Hollywood in recent years has seen film after film and series after series – populated with indomitable protagonists who never face any real struggles while giving interchangeable identitarian lectures – hammered by audiences for their failure to tell believable stories.
The Woman King is perfectly watchable but it is the best in class of a ceaselessly expanding stream of political posturing masquerading as films. As long as a film’s message matters more than the means by which its story is told, Davis won’t get her way.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.