Bolanle Austen-Peter’s directorial “House of Ga’a” is the sloppiest kind of historical drama conceivable. It fails on every count. It’s not just the epic setting that receives a poor rendition but also an utter absence of tight psychologically refracted political drama, which is anyway belying the events at its center that massively grates from the get-go. The very vision underlying the film seems so half-etched, downright patently ludicrous in myriad sections that it becomes increasingly burdensome to look past the obvious flaws and locate points to emotionally invest in the narrative.
Characters can’t shake off cardboard constructs. This political drama is conspicuously primed, but the film does not have the intelligence or the wit to extract the compelling edges from such dramatic terrain. It all feels plodding, uninspired, and wholly lacking in any spirit. The gumption to trace the fault lines of conflict is nowhere to be found, even if Tunde Babalola’s screenplay makes concerted efforts to mount the varied strands of dramatic tussle among characters. The action moves from one setting to the other occasionally, yet such shifts border on the redundant because specificities aren’t something the makers seem to fathom. It’s all a generic muddle of action. Even the plotting feels strangely lifeless. It is a peculiarly listless film whose energies are entirely diluted by its stubborn incoherence, leaking through every aspect of the way it has been set up.
The film backtracks to the eighteenth century, pivoting around the Oyo empire. Political skulduggery is at the very heart of the film, mapping a trajectory of heightened ambition, its price, and the degree to which you can go so as to enact your quest for glory. In the pursuit, everything can get trampled over. Nothing is out of bounds. Bashorun Ga’a ( Femi Branch) is the central figure of the saga. This stuff is drawn from history, but what we get is a shoddy recreation of power struggles that are bereft of rich, thrusting, and intriguing dynamics. What results is a hollow reimagination.
Reimagination would be a stretch because this film is just flat and insipid. As Bashorun takes over the kingdom, his tyrannical tendencies are highly marked and ever-present. There is a group of leaders that still puts up a show of being above him. But Bashorun couldn’t be more bothered about them. He takes one of the slaves, Zeinab ( Tosin Adeyemi), as his wife. Obviously, there are disturbances among his other wives, who are vying for his attention. There’s the arc of his son, who gets sent away to Dahomey. The son has his eyes set on Princess Agbonyin ( Bridget Nkem), who also loves him. It is no surprise to witness this romance hurtle into star-crossed ends. Tragedy permeates so many corners of the narrative, but the film doesn’t remotely succeed in scooping out the dark, fractious drama.
Austen-Peters seeks to establish a sense of political churn, setting into motion competing strands of subterfuge, backstabbing, and shocking betrayals. None of these arrive at any authentic, heart-tugging place. What is presented is a colorless, unconvincing, and exaggerated drama, with elements in complete disarray. The shuttling from one track to the other to accomplish the narrative’s roving dramatic pulse leads to a sacrificing of major character developments. There’s an abundance of silliness here, which insouciantly trumps impulses of cogently tying up the myriad parts that are affected into vivid movement.
“House of Ga’a” is a static, bloated drama that misreads key rhythms of the political saga. The pacing is off-key, the characters are mostly unidimensional, and therefore, the emotions barely strike at an earnest space. One of the most nagging headaches of the film is the divesting of its female characters of any complexity. Granted that they may have little agency in such circumstances, but the film does nothing to flash the empathy of recognizing that they do have a voice somewhere buried under the folds of repression. It is such a bummer that it kept me from summoning the shreds of interest in this dull, exasperatingly layer-free film.
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