04

Aug

“Life Above All” is a simple, but potent story about coming-of-age in the face of a taboo plague

In South Africa we have the story of a girl, Chanda (Khomotso Mankaya), who has to confront stigmas that hurt her small one-parent family, which is led by her mother, Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane). It’s “Life, Above All,” by Oliver Schmitz.

We start when Chanda runs an errand to take care of her youngest sister, Sarah’s, funeral.  She died from a plague that no one discusses.  Above all, in dealing with life, theirs is a story about survival: how they pay their bills, deal with  shameful rumors and the sneers from their neighbors are open questions.

Mom and daughter keep hope tight between them (courtesy Sony Classics)

This simple story, about a complicated fight to survive disease and ignorance, both willful and desperate, will show at the Lagoon Cinema starting on August 5th.  This story is interesting, beginning too slowly, and getting and giving us its bearings about half-way through.

Chanda, headstrong and critically thoughtful, lives in a provincial, barely educated culture that’s more invested in religion and superstition than in education.  She succeeded in school until her family’s burdens, especially Sarah’s death, began to weigh on her.  She stands-up for her mom’s health, and stands up to the rumors, deadbeat dad and her traditional family’s scorn, and superstitious neighbors who disdain her.

The plague finally takes the steam out of Chanda’s mom, who is moved away, out of view of gossip mongers.  After what seems like weeks without parents,  Chanda tracks down her mom, having to ignore some neighbors’ misdirection on the way.  Chanda’s smart enough to understand that some questions and topics are beyond herself; she needs her mom.

It's hard for an 11 year-old to lead a family (courtesy Sony Classics)

This simple, but gripping coming-of-age story is worth watching.

As with Ree Dolly, from 2010′s splendid “Winter’s Bone,” Chanda must grow-up too early and too quickly, around people for whom education is simply an extra.  For her it promises an array of freedoms.   She faces a short, but hard journey as she tracks down her mom and needs to suck comfort from that.

Ms. Mankaya’s performance as Chanda is potent; her talent is either natural or her craft so formidable that her nuances and touches make Chanda live, be real.  Just as with Jennifer Lawrence’s extraordinary, under-appreciated performance in “Winter’s Bone,” Mankaya her character a similar subtlety.

Broader takeaways: “Life, Above All” is a decent film about a simple family, who must deal with a merciless, taboo disease and neighbors who won’t picture themselves beyond superstitions.  These people’s lives are basic.  They’re prepared for no questions more ambitious than “how do I feed myself and children?”

One reason to watch Chanda’s and her family story: she is prepared for those ambitions.  That’s a different kind of hunger.

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04

Jun

Behind-the-scenes with “The First Grader’s” director, Justin Chadwick Pt 2

Now, let’s finish the conversation with the man who put “The First Grader” on-screen.

W: According to the Walker Art Center’s program you thought “it was a really challenging movie to do.”

The challenge now is to actually to get the film to play to audiences.  We’ve got distribution across America, which is absolutely wonderful.  Because films like this, that’ve got just as good of production values as bigger movies, just as beautiful stories, that aren’t necessarily the “Thors” and “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” the –

W: The blockbusters -

There has to be a place for smaller films – not smaller in their kind of scope, but in terms of their machine behind them.  Because audiences like to go the cinema, to sit in the dark, and go through these emotional stories, and there has to be a place for it.  That’s gonna be the challenge.  Getting them to the cinema, because we haven’t got posters on every single bus going by, we haven’t got advertisements in the papers.  Audiences need these stories.  There should be a place in the modern cinema.

Justin Chadwick directs his "First Grader" (courtesy National Geographic Films)

W: What has you really jazzed about this story, this film that journalists haven’t asked about?  “This is a really cool thing, but nobody ever asks me about it…”  Do you have something like that that you wanna get out there?

Before we were making the film, I talked to the creative team, and we talked about those hardened critics that want to see a certain kind of film, a feel-good movie, it makes you feel celebratory when you come out, make you laugh, makes you cry.  What we wanted to do, what’s unusual about this story, coming out of Africa, where so many African movies have to do with huge issues: genocide, famine.

W: Corruption.  Violence.

All of that.  This felt like something different; this one was a celebratory film, A film about hope – in the true sense of the word.  It wasn’t sugar-coated.  Because those scenes actually happened.

We don’t want the film to be like spinach; you know this film is really good for you.  We were very, very aware of that.  I think it’s very easy to dismiss the film.  It’s come out of Telluride, the snowball of the film festivals, and the audiences who’ve seen it.  It’s very easy to dismiss it as a little, tiny film, but actually it’s not that at all.  Again, there has to be a place for this in cinema, but it’s getting harder and harder because blockbusters are so all-consuming of the territory, and the cinema space.  It’s hard to get your movie through.

Just like the majority block specific history lessons, making knowledge hard to get through, only now the UK newspapers are covering recent headlines about “found” and damning Mau Mau records.  Throughout April 2011, the “Times of London” ran almost weekly stories on the “discovery” of damning files previously thought to have been long-ago lost or destroyed.  They’ve a paywall just like the “New York Times,” so providing a link would be foolish.

Kimani Maruge whose story goes toe-to-toe with flashy summer movies

W: As “The First Grader” raises the topic of the Mau Mau rebellion, that reminded me of a documentary that Bill Cosby made, “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed?”  I thought, considering how English folks were barely taught this, and how some modern-day Kenyans and Kikuyu might not know even the basics of the Mau Mau situation, was it lost, was it stolen, or did it stray?  You mentioned you weren’t told much of this when you were in school.

Not at all!  It was the stuff that’d been in the press at the time; the stuff about the Mau Mau going into people’s houses, killing them while they sleep in their beds.  You didn’t hear that 1.2 million Kikyyu had been tortured, had been incarcerated, had been rounded up in concentration camps.  There was many, many camps across Kenya filled with young and old men and women from the Kikuyu, and that story has never really surfaced.

This documentation has come to mind just recently.  There’s not many of the Mau Mau veterans left.  K’mani was 89.  When they talk about compensation or acknowledgment it’s too little too late.  At least the truth will come out now, with the missing files that’ve been discovered.

As an aside I mentioned, to Mr. Chadwick, my having sat near a Kenyan woman, a Kikuyu, at the screening at the Walker Art Center, who had few criticisms about the film, but wished that the tribalism would’ve been less mentioned.

The BBC were very concerned about me going there.  In everyday banter and everyday conversations tribal divisions would come up.  And yes they are trying to move on; I do say that.  Everyday on the radio the DJs would be talking about the differences of the tribes.  I know where she’s coming from.  A lot in the Western press of the tribal differences in Africa are always negatively drawn.

Jane Obinchu says, in the film, we’ve moved away from that.  I had a young cameraman saying “you know, everyone says on the surface that we’re all moving away from it,” but he said “you know it’s still very, very much present, and if you speak to anyone, the younger generation, it’s still very much present.  I would pick it up from what I was hearing on the radio, from the Kenyans I was working with.  And there’s a lot to celebrate about the different tribes.   I heard all the time around me.  It’s a Kenyan story; you can’t shy away from it.  I mean Maruge himself wasn’t a perfect man by any stretch.  It’s been a very one-sided story.

W: I was skeptical about what seemed to be indulgent, cheesy lines at the climax: “Maybe one day a Kenyan will be in the White House.  Yes we Can!”

So 2003, exactly when Kenya announced free education, Obama went as a Senator; I heard this like three weeks before we started shooting. (In reality, Mr. Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, taking office in 2005.)  And also I was hearing on the radio from a guy, who talked to everybody.  And so Obama came here as a Senator; this is why every time I was going somewhere on a bus, somebody said, “Obama sat here;” Michelle and him had been on this Mutatu bus.  This radio DJ who was the voice of the people.

Basically because as a student I saw “Do the Right Thing,” loved that film.  Sam Jackson was in that film; Jackson was hysterical!  He was this voice; it was a brilliant, inspiring film for me.  I saw that in Manchester.  I remembered that.  And there was no real humor in that film (First Grader.)  So I managed to track down the guy; he’s called Churchill.   He was at the African MTV awards.  He brought the house down.  I managed to track him down.  I said, “Listen.  I’d love for you to be part of this film.”  He says, “I know Maruge.  He was on my show!, on my breakfast show.”   He said, “I’ll definitely do it.  Are you gonna say about Obama?”

“I always said he’d be the headmaster of the world; I always said it, from 2003, he was the headmaster of the world.  And he said, “I was the one, right from the beginning, and that’s why he’s in the White House!”  And he said, build me a little studio just outside of where I’ve got my radio show.  Be there, and I’ll give you a half an hour.”  So that’s where that came from, from the true source.  Everywhere I went, once I got Churchill involved, they said “We always knew Obama was gonna be President.  Even way back in 2003, when they came, we knew, we just knew he was gonna be President.”  That’s why I put that in there.

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28

May

Behind-the-Scenes with “The First Grader’s” director, Justin Chadwick Pt. 1

I spoke with Justin Chadwick, director of “The First Grader,” one day after having seen it at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center – for free!  Always the right price, but particularly so during a toilet bowl economy.  As with many independent film-makers, he is down-to-earth and pretty much a straight shooter.

"The First Grader's" director, Justin Chadwick, with Will Wright (courtesy Wright's Words)

Will Wright: It’s common and typical for Anglo film-makers to make movies about black people, where the anchor of the story isn’t black him or herself.  It’s refreshing to see that there isn’t a heroic, superior Anglo who comes in to “save the school.”  We had “Dangerous Minds,” 15 years ago, and “Freedom Writers.”  How concerned were you, being a man from Manchester, who wasn’t introduced to all the dynamic and violent politics coming in and doing this story?

Justin Chadwick: Well I was very aware from the outset that I am from Manchester England.  And I had not been to Kenya before, and it dealt with a period of history, as well as Kenyan history that hadn’t been told.  There’s very few records remaining of that time.  At the time of making this film, the British press side of things.  They’re represented as being these guerilla army that basically murder people in their beds.  There’s that, but this other side.

So I knew going into Kenya, that, I was from outside.  I had to use that to its advantage, to use it as a way of me being able to go in as a guest in their country.  The first three or four months I was there I basically observed, and listened and let people tell their stories.  I’d go speak to the elders in each village that I’d go it.  And because of that approach, everywhere I went I was open-heartedly received.  I wasn’t like the other movies that’d been there: “Tomb Raider,” “Out of Africa,” even “Constant Gardener,” had shipped everything in to that country.  I was living with the people I was working with, living in the community where the school was.  Even from the very first, I was with Kmani Maruge in his hospice.  I would go in with Kikuyu, which were his tribe.  So they built an openness and between me and the people I was representing and also the people I was working with.

Mr. Chadwick directing "The First Grader"

I didn’t know what it was going to be like in Tudor England, or with the “Other Boleyn Girl,” or I didn’t know what it was going to be like when I did “Bleak House,” in Victorian England.  With this I actually talked directly with the people that this story involves, to try and find the truth.   And I think that’s what stood me in stead for it really.

W: You’re the second film-maker I’ve met recently who’s spoken of having that observational approach, attitude.  Can you tell me how many of your peers use that approach?

Ang Lee, when he did sense and sensibility – I remember reading how he felt like an outsider coming into English, period, costume drama, would use that eye that he had, and that sensibility that he had to try to understand.  He made a film from being like that, in that way.  He made a film that was really true.  And yet you know, he was from a different world, and a different country.  And I remember that was something that was in my mind when I was going into this.

This began for American newsreaders in 2004, when the New York Times’ Marc Lacey wrote a Sunday profile piece.  There he described what “changed when the Kenyan government declared a year ago that primary school education would be free through grade 8. Millions of new pupils showed up at neighborhood campuses, swelling enrollment from 5.9 million students to 7.3 million virtually overnight. Mr. Maruge, with his gray beard and weathered face, was among those in line.”

According to Robyn Dixon’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times, a year later, “As a young man, he was angered over his lack of education. He put those feelings away, but the thirst for education lay dormant most of his life. Now it has burst out, perhaps too late to keep up with the whirl of his belated ambitions: primary school, secondary school, university and a career in veterinary science.”

Oliver Litondo as Kimani Maruge in "The First Grader"

W: How did you design the proportion of Mau Mau flashback scenes to the proportion of the present-day, desire to learn kind of scenes?

To get that kind of balance is tricky in a film.  I wanted to put in that backstory because it was so important to the man that he was when he went to the school to learn to read, he wanted to understand his past, to move on.

I worked with an editor called Carol Littleton; she’d done films like “ET” and “The Big Chill,” and she’s a brilliant editor.  She always talks about the playability of a film; you go into a cinema, and the film has to play.  That you’ve got to sweep your audience with you to the end of the film.

It was something, from the very beginning, that I’m very conscious of, when I’m working on the script: it was, yes, a simple story about a man going back to school and being educated.  But also it had to propel forward with an energy.  So that was something – just the pacing of the film, how we put the flashbacks.  Each time there was a scene, it pushed on to the next.  So there was a momentum to the film; it always had pace to it.

As Mr. Lacey reported in 2004, having access to lessons and a great teacher is splendid.  But then to have that teacher plucked out from under you, like the first rug and hint at stability, was rough and short-sighted.  Mr. Chadwick mentioned an anecdote that Jane Obinchu, Mr. Maruge’s sole headmaster in the film, told him about how her students reacted to her having been away from that school, and aborting her trouble-making.

“Jane Obinchu was the one who told me about the riot at the end of the movie; that was something that wasn’t in the film’s original script, that Ann had written.  Jane said,’Oh did they tell you what had happened?  Let me tell you about what happened when I was thrown out of the school.’  And then she told me about these amazing children.  This stand, as their parents were welcoming the new headmaster for the school, the children closed the gates of the school, stood-up against them with rocks, not plastic rocks and bits like it is in my film. And they refused to open the gates to the school.  There was this big, huge riot.  The parents climbed over the gates of the school.  The police had to be called to break it all up,” Mr. Chadwick said.

He continues, “Yes, it feels extraordinary that kids rise up, against their parents.” That climax wasn’t in the original script.  He mentioned it because, that is something like from a Hollywood film, but it wasn’t.  I know, when people see that in the film, they’ll think gosh that’s a figment of a writer’s imagination.  But it’s absolutely true there.”

Click, if you’re hunger for the second half of this conversation with Justin.

Justin Chadwick harnesses child power

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27

May

“The First Grader” has inspiring, urgent hope for literacy, and Kenyan history

When education hits the hometown headlines, it’s usually due to bullying, disruptive student, or “non-essential,” but vital programs having been gutted.  There are still places where the zeal and hunger for knowledge understanding and growth come through like a natural force.

One new film, “The First Grader,” a drama from director Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl” and “Bleak House”), reminds us of that zeal and the kind of history or community oral memory that keeps it stoked.  This film is the extraordinary story of a man who seized his people’s first opportunity to learn to read right when his First World contemporaries would be reading hospice brochures.

Kimani Maruge (Oliver Litondo) in "The First Grader" (courtesy National Geographic Films)

In 2002 the Kenyan government invited all citizens to attend primary school for free.  This led to surprising and stymieing situation: according to the film, more than 200 children came in throngs to claim the school’s 50 seats.

One man showed up, not with his son in tow, nor his grandson, but himself and his zealous curiosity.  At age 84, Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge, who had served his country as a Mau Mau guerilla, was prepared to sit among children so he could learn to read.  “The First Grader” extols the power and promise of basic education, the essential literacy and people’s zeal for it.  Contrast this with the disappointing portion of American youths who, having taken free public education for granted, squander their opportunities to milk it to their curiosity’s fill.

Mr. Maruge without his classroom clothes (courtesy National Geographic Films)

This is being shown at Landark Theatre’s Edina Theatre for a week from May 27st.

The zealous reminder about the promise of education is powerful.  Mr. Maruge’s (Oliver Litondo) dual narrative, from, first off, his incredible personal history to, secondly, his equally winning pursuit of knowledge and access.  These topics of literacy and access are one half of the story’s message, vital for those, whose elders didn’t raise them within reach of books.  The other historical message, although dwarfed by the main plot, provides a lesson about the prices paid in Kenya’s fight for freedom, to lead itself.

My conversation with Justin Chadwick tells more details and insights about Mr. Maruge’s complex story and how he put it on-screen.

The Mau Mau soldiers, despite British colonial propaganda, zealously opposed Britain’s inhumane, violent tyranny.  This is a barely known slice of African and Kenyan history that is probably, largely omitted from American and British high school history texts.  In many ways, Mr. Maruge’s magnetism is so potent the hardest-to-watch parts of his whole history can nourish viewers. We are introduced to a piece of history – lost, stolen or strayed.

Chadwick’s film tells us that Maruge simply wanted to be able to read a letter, not just any.  But one from the government.  It apologized for the abuses and thanked him for his sacrifice and service to a sovereign Kenya, and told him of reparations.

Feel-good movies are simple yarns for simple people.  “The First Grader” is a mostly family-friendly and crowd-pleasing story.  Usually viewers only need to be open to the high-concept “seize the day” or “power of one” messages in order to appreciate them  These stories are basic tales that reiterate what your parents extolled until they became sick of you rolling your eyes.

It’s remarkable that Justin Chadwick defies this genre’s typical limitations: simplicity, and shallow, flat portrayals & narratives.  It’s a feel-good story that takes us back to “Lean on Me,” from 1989, “The Power of One,” from 1992, or “Dangerous Minds,” from 1995.

Very few films deal with mature, difficult historical topics with candor and without bias, especially with Africa; it’s misunderstood and tainted with Western stereotypes.  Mr. Chadwick defies the Hollywoodian routine of taking a black story and then identifying or conjuring a superior Anglo hero as the lead, even when that clashes with the historical record.  This happened in often: in “Glory,” from 1988, “The Power of One,” “Amistad,” from 1997, and other films.

Thank goodness, as Mr. Chadwick mentioned in our conversation, there’s humor in this movie to staple viewers’ butts to their seats.  Kenyan radio DJ Churchill has bits throughout where he gives a voice to the public’s opinion of Maruge and his situation.

That reminds me of New York-based comedian, Rachel Feinstein, who has a witty and hilarious bit, where she lovingly mocks her mom’s closet desire to take Michelle Pfeiffer’s place in Dangerous Minds:

My mom wants to be, like, one of those white women, in the movies, that saves a black school; like Michelle Pfeiffer, in “Dangerous Minds.”  I think that’s her dream.

Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t have this clip (nor do DailyMotion or Vimeo), but it is elsewhere – it’s well worth a click, and a chuckle, specifically at 00:36.

But “The First Grader” takes a risk: it introduces viewers to a history of British colonists and their arrogant barbarism toward the Natives.  The Mau Mau rebellion is probably a rare topic for American students, outside of high-level college classes.

It’s a portion of Kenyan and British colonial history that has been easily lost, stolen or strayed; that’s also the title of an incisive, but accessible documentary, “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed,” which Bill Cosby made 40 years ago, in 1968, as a part of his doctoral program.  The film illustrated the slippery slope that can lead to forgotten, rarely comfortable, but undeniably vital slices of history that prove to be too tart for the majority to swallow without flailing.

A meager excerpt, a tease, from “Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed?”

What doesn’t work?  The people who fought against Mr. Maruge being a student had shallow arguments for expelling him from class.  “There isn’t enough room or money?!”  They are simple, hard-working people who can’t understand why an old man would push so hard to be a student.  It’s too bad that their arguments against his being allowed are narrow and shoddy.

“The First Grader” provides two takeaways, one for the feel good audience: no one is too old to be a student.   And another for those who already know this, and have brought someone to the theater; they’ll enjoy the subplot about Mr. Maruge’s backstory, and what it reveals about a vital, but well-hidden topic of African, Kenya, British and ultimately World history.

You’ll find more details, in my interview with the director, Justin Chadwick.  You’ll learn why yet another Anglo man made a movie about Africans, and the unbelievable Hollywoodian climactic riot scene wasn’t yet another one conjured by that Dream Factory.

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