Controversial! The Woman King (2022) || Movie Review

The long-awaited controversial movie is here, The Woman King. This movie provoked a lot of emotions and feelings from people, especially Africans even before it premiered. When I heard about the movie, I decided not to watch the trailers or read anything about the movie. Going in to watch the movie blind without any information or background story about the movie was the best decision I ever made. As I said earlier this movie is controversial because it was inspired by a true-life historical event that took place in Africa back in the 17th to 19th century. Reviewing this movie, I am going to be talking about the movie and why it is controversial. First I will review the movie.

The Woman King is a movie that was released in September 2022 and it is an American historical epic movie that revolves around the story of the female warriors that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey around from the 17th to 19th century. This movie was set in 1820 and filmed in South Africa. This movie stars Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, John Boyega, Sheila Atim, and other actors that might be familiar to you.

The movie starts in Mahi village when their group of men captured lots of Dahomean women for the Oyo empire for the slave trade. General Nanisca, the leader of the all-female Dahomey warriors, led her group to the Mahi village where their women were held captive to set them free. Launching an unexpected attack in the village, they liberated their women from the Oyo slave trade circle and killed all the Mahi men. Returning to Dahomey triumphant, king Ghezo prepares for all sides of war from the Oyo empire. General Nanisca starts to train a new set of warriors to join the Agojie. These women were selected from the women rescued from their mission to Mahi village.

Things become interesting when a father brings and surrenders his strong-willed daughter, Nawi, to the king for not agreeing to marry an old man who will assault her physically. Nanisca accepts Nawi to start training to join the Agojie not knowing that Nawi was her lost daughter back when she was young, captured and assaulted by Oyo men daily. Nawi soon makes a good bond of friendship with Izogie, one of the high-ranking soldiers in Agojie as she wishes to be strong like her. As Nawi begins her training, she learns how to follow orders, and learns that the Agojie unit is a group of strong women who are together and not alone. As Nawi awaited her training trial graced by king Ghezo's presence, Dahomey received visitors from Portugal.

The two white slave traders that came to the shore of Dahomey arrived to ally with the Oyo led by General Oba Ade. The two white slave traders, Santo, and Malik, a half-Dahomean also came to visit King Ghezo but on their way, Malik encounters Nawi in the stream where he stops to have a bath and got acquainted with her. Santo and Malik get to witness the new Agojie trainees final trial day. Nawi won the trial and then by nightfall, she sneaks to see Malik where she learns that the Oyo are matching with their army to Dahomey for war. How will the movie end? You have to watch the movie to find out.

My Opinion About The Movie.

Watching this movie without any forehand information or teaser was a good decision I made even though I could not help but hear that the movie was not portrayed well according to the historical events.

The Woman King is a fantastic movie made with a good plot sequence arrangement and excellent preparation. I think why this movie turned out well regardless of the criticism is because of the director (Gina Prince-Blythewood), cinematographer (Polly Morgan), editor (Terilyn A. Shropshire), and actors. The director did a lot of work with the arrangement of the scenes, the stunts, and the action parts. She made sure all the actors were trained in basic martial art and boxing to pull off all the stunts done in the movie. To show her commitment to the movie, she actually trained with them to encourage them.

Let's talk about the scenes in the movie. I don't have any favorite scenes because all the scenes in this movie gave me a triumphant chill or can I say a feeling that was backed up with adrenaline. All the scenes were perfectly shot, with good lighting even during the night shoots. Clear picture, even though the colors used in all the movie scenes were dull colors. The plot was written well in a "fictional" way and I will say the storyline is catchy and fascinating. You get hooked from the beginning till the end. There were no dulling moments or disruptive scene flow.

The actors. They all performed excellently well and I was incredibly impressed with Viola because that 57-year-old woman brought in her full energy. Ever since I fell in love with Viola as an actress when she acted as the lead character in the TV series 'How To Get Away With Murder' and the movie 'The Help'. I noticed one thing about her: she is always passionate about her roles. She makes sure her roles are performed well as they should. Nawi (Thuso Mbedu) also stood out with her performance though this is my first time seeing her on the screen. Also, Izogie (Lashana Lynch) is one of my favorite characters in the movie. Her mannerisms, her strength, and her passion for her role were what made her stand out even more than Viola.

Let's talk about the unnecessary characters in the movie that were of no use to the background story or plot development and I felt it was a waste of resources for adding them. The characters are; the king's first wife and his messenger. The characters were not just unnecessary, but they were also annoying to the point I wish I could punch them through the screen. Are there flaws in this movie? Yes, there are a lot of them and I will talk about them below.

Why This Movie Is Controversial.

As said earlier in this post that this movie was based on a true-life historical event, it was not portrayed well according to the events. This movie is not offensive to me because I see it as a fictional tale and nothing more, though it made me go read lots of events that happened in Africa around the 17th to 19th century. The exploration was educational to me. Without this movie, I wouldn't know about these events because history is not my strong suit.

This movie is controversial because it is a fabricated fictional tale of the event that went down in the West African kingdom of Dahomey. The historical events were misinterpreted and portrayed in a way that turned the villains into heroes. It mixes true historical events with fiction to carve out an epic story about an all-female group of warriors called the Agojie. The Agojie was portrayed as a heroic military unit, but in reality, they were not. They were brutal conquerors by conquering nearby African villages and taking their people in as captives. They were also known to raid and brutally kill their victims bringing their heads and genitals as souvenirs back home. In the end, their captives were sold as slaves, or used as sacrifices to their gods.

The Dahomey kingdom was actively participating slave trade by selling their people or captives to the whites, which is where their wealth came from. These facts were not portrayed in the movie but were misinterpreted. This movie also portrayed that the Kingdom Dahomey were the people who put an end to the slave trade but that was not the reality. Dahomey was forced to stop their slave trade at the urging of the British but it didn't last long as their wealth began to decline.

All these misinterpretations are no one's fault except for Maria Bello. She was the one who wrote the story, she was the one who visited Benin and got inspired to write the story. She is not an African and I can understand why this movie was misinterpreted. The people surrounding the production, writing, and editing know nothing about the history of the Kingdom of Dahomey, hence where the misinterpretation came from.

Watching this movie I picked out a flaw which is the accents of the actors. From the beginning of time, Hollywood has always messed up and portrayed the accent of Africans wrongly. There hasn't been any improvement since the critics of Black Panther, but they keep repeating the same mistake. Their accents were flawed, their behavior was flawed, and their mannerisms are flawed. Izogie (Lashana Lynch) and king Ghezo (John Boyega) did well above average with their accent and mannerisms. These two actors portrayed the African accent well.

Rating and Recommendations

Not to make this post too lengthy, but I will give you my rating. I am rating this movie 4.5 stars. It is a fantastic movie that themes a powerful All-Female Cast, Strength, Forgiveness, And Redemption. The costumes and sets were epic. Also, it is an amazing movie with an all-black cast. I enjoyed it, it was a thrilling experience for me and educational regardless of the all bad critics and misinterpreted of historical events. I would recommend this movie to lovers of epic and historical movies and also lovers of women heroes. If you haven't watched it, hurry and now watch it.

All images above are from the movie screenshots

Poster image source

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