I just watched Netflix’s Elesin Oba, directed by the brilliant Biyi Bandele, and now I realize I’ve never really seen a Nollywood movie like this at all. This literary and elusive work, which seems to polarize critics, is quite simple in its delivery yet labyrinthine in scope, guileless yet indignant. 

Elesin Oba portrays an innocence that is universal yet so ominous that it is difficult to watch passively. The movie demands absorption and attention. For many years, a section of Nollywood’s consumer base cried itself hoarse, demanding stories that dug deep into indigenous Nigerian stories set in that hallowed period between pre-colonial interference and early post-independence. They sought films made in the style of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Scorsese’s Silence, or Forman's Amadeus. Adaptations of poems, plays and prose. Although a couple of indigenous titles come to mind à la “Things Fall Apart” and “Kongi's Harvest”, the scope of production and professionalism involved bordered on the amateur. Now comes Elesin Oba — a cinematic adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s Death and The King’s Horseman, featuring an ensemble cast and bankrolled by the world’s biggest streaming service. It promised to be a masterpiece.



Based on true events that took place in the 1940s, it is useful to note that The King’s Horseman is a dramatic examination of, not merely the tension between indigenous African customs and the cultural ignorance of the colonizers, but most importantly, the struggle of the human will against the conventional. Soyinka himself was loathe to emphasize that instead of a clash between cultures, the story be perceived as an intra-cultural conflict between people and tradition.

 The Alaafin is dead, and Elesin, his Horseman, is expected to “commit death” and accompany his ruler to heaven. For this noble gesture, and to undertake the journey, the entire village joins in honoring him. This is also where we, the viewer, join Elesin Oba (Odunlade Adekoya) as he lies lavishly amidst his plump wives, before partaking in the dance of death through the market, hailed by his praise-singer (Olawale Brymo Olofooro).


After watching for about thirty minutes, I recalled the Polish movie, Cold War by Pavel Pawlikowski. A drama that was more musical than dramatic. In a similar way, Elesin Oba is a celebration of Yoruba music. The propensity of the Yorubas to “jaiye” is legendary. But more than that, music is an intricate member of this society and as old as its culture. Music accompanies life, celebrates weddings and foreshadows death. On his last night on earth, Elesin Oba, surrounded by women, is dancing admirably. Nothing can stop his journey. The Alaafin’s wait is over. Or is it? 

At the eleventh hour, his horseman decides that, before crossing the threshold between life and death, he must offload his seed and "travel light". The Alaafin must wait a while as Iyaloja (Shaffy Bello) finds a parting gift for the Elesin: a virgin bride. But an ominous warning precedes this gift. Even the Elesin’s singing entourage mischievously croon: “because the man approaches a brand new bride he forgets the long faithful mother of his children.”. It all makes for a fascinating spectacle and all is going well.



Until the District Officer, Simon Pilking (Langley Kirkwood) learns of the ritual and decides to be a busybody. On the eve of a ball, Sergeant Amusa (Jide Kosoko —playing a “boy-boy” at his age is crazy) delivers a report on the burial ritual of the Alaafin. He meets Officer Pilking and his wife, Jane, preparing to welcome His Majesty dressed in the masks and regalia of revered Yoruba deities. Amusa’s shock —and expression of shock— at this desecration of his beliefs is a mere irritant to the District Officer. What is unacceptable is the Elesin’s ritual, a crime under Crown Law. He resolves to imprison Elesin rather than permit suicide.



This is the crux of the movie. The Elesin has delayed his journey. The Oyibo has interfered with the ritual. As a result, the Alaafin is stranded in the great beyond. Who is to blame? This is the important question the film asks and Biyi Bandele’s camera deftly weaves between both worlds, using music as its vehicle, guiding all characters involved towards the fateful convergence in the last half-hour. Elesin tries to provide an answer when he interprets the intervention as an act of the gods, but the villagers' songs of praise turn to songs of scorn, insults and derision. They mock him in Yoruba, singing: 

we said you were the hunter returning home in triumph, a slain buffalo pressing down on his neck; you said wait, I first must turn up this cricket hole with my toes.

Almost every character speaks in traditional Yoruba proverbs. As a work of art, if Elesin Oba is a bowl of boiled yam, proverbs are the palm-oil used to eat it. It is necessary to note how the villagers criticized their own Elesin and not the District Officer who imprisoned him. The bane of most of African literature, —and African intellectual art in general—  and how its been received over the years is that, as soon as they are employed creatively, they acquire the superficial tag of “clash of cultures”. This is often a misleading and prejudicial label which assumes equality in every given situation between the colonist’s perspective and the indigenous culture, on the actual soil of the latter. The presence of the white man in The King’s Horseman is merely a catalyst and not the trigger itself. 

In the Elesin’s reluctance to commit suicide, the people of Oyo were witnessing a hedonistic resistance to tradition from within. A narrative that centers on cultural evolution — a natural and universal phenomenon. The white man was not the first to confront questions of tradition's impotence in the face of libertinism. Soyinka insisted on this approach and Biyi Bandele honoured it. When the climax of the movie came, the District Officer was more or less a bystander, overtaken by events beyond his understanding, as Iyaloja rightly observed.


What purports to be the climax is also what befuddles most critics of the film. A climax that did not feel like a climax. Leaving one with a feeling of foreplay without release, of pregnancy without birth. But a plot like this rarely has a climatic scene in the conventional sense. Being originally a play (a Soyinka play for that matter), emphasis leaned on dialogue rather than action. To pull it off on-screen would require a herculean effort from the actors in terms of delivery and emotional intelligence — Daniel Day-Lewis and Vanessa Redgrave levels. The climax unfolds not at once but sequentially; when Elesin sees his son, Olunde —on leave from medical school in England—, after many years and is betrayed by his appearance, when Iyaloja drives Elesin Oba to suicide with her bitter words, when Olunde inadvertently preserves the honor of his people in place of his father. Olunde's misinterpreted sacrifice mirrors the fate of Nigeria's post-independence offspring who pay for the shortcomings of their parents, generation after generation. 

Odunlade Adekoya gives a really good performance, but he’s probably let down a little by the theatrical structure of the dialogue and a conspicuous beard. Shaffy Bello’s performance is imperial. Deyemi Okanlawon does his best with what the script gives him but is probably the weakest link. A heavily conflicted character, he enters and exits the story unceremoniously. The Bride, in her own way the root of the conflict, is reduced to a mute object of masculine libido and bargain for prestige.


The main characters of Elesin Oba may feel unforgivably one-dimensional to some, but perhaps it was necessary. Because at its core, Elesin Oba is not about a plot, a hero or an anti-hero, it’s about a world or an interaction of worlds; the living and the dead, tradition and skepticism, Oyo and Britain. To help facilitate this interaction, afrosurrealism is employed and language is dispensed with as a communication barrier. Elesin sends his accusations in Yoruba, the District Officer understands and counters in English. Artistic license. A staple literary device. Think Fantastic Planet by Rene Laloux or The Fabulous Baron Munchausen by Karel Zeman.

This brings me to what has been said about Elesin Oba's inaccessibility. A section of critics are convinced that the movie can only be understood by those viewers who have been exposed to "Aristotelian heroism" and "Soyinka's Fourth Theory", and as such, no one else should bother watching or trying to understand the film. It delights me that, at last, a Nollywood movie has evoked open discourse on philosophical concepts. However, in my view this position is misguided. I believe that The King's Horseman can be enjoyed by everyone: thinkers, thespians and the hoi polloi. 

By the end of the movie, I remembered Ousmane Sèmbene and his last film, Moolaadé, which is similar in context. But unlike Sèmbene's film, Biyi Bandele's is less ideologically prescriptive. The King's Horseman stirs the conscience by asking the relevant questions but leaves us to find the answers. This adaptation of Death and The King's Horseman is a cinematic seed and Biyi Bandele has surely traveled light.

Rating: 8/10