Of Nollywood, Actors, and Paucity of Acting

(By Immanuel James Ibe-Anyanwu) - Every man has his own vanity. … If I were to choose between the story and the prose of a good book, I’d choose the latter—the juice. With movies, I’d choose the acting over the story. Good acting is when you cannot tell the actor apart from the character; when acting is so real as if a secret camera were hidden to catch regular people leading their normal lives—like when you watch “24” and wonder if those guys were actors, or real CTU agents doing their thing and getting filmed.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—a memoir, now a film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Trywell Kamkwamba, the Malawian father whose teenage son, William Kamkwamba, exploited the wind and generated electricity, solving drought and famine. A father who, though initially, even fiercely reluctant, finally gave his only bicycle to be cannibalized for a schoolboy’s dream.

             Ejiofor is a poor farmer and there’s no single doubt about it: his energy, looks, emotions. So dissolved into his character is he that, at first, I fail to recognize him. His home, the village, the people—nothing seems like it’s a movie. His wife, Agnes—played by the popular Senegalese actress, Aïssa Maïga—looks, in every detail, the image you know about that kind of woman in your village.
Photography replaces dialogue in many parts, such that you see rather than hear the story. I find myself clapping as I watch the movie on Netflix.

It is a familiar story of African grit but, underneath, also a story of the politics that has kept the continent in darkness: that of its democracy as a conspiracy of thieves. But acting makes all the difference, validating the acclaim that has attended the Ejiofor movie. Reminds me of Nollywood.

The major Nollywood challenge, in my view, is not infrastructure—which can be explained away in terms of funding. Acting is the beast here: where Olu Jacobs grunts his way through an entire career, and Pete Edochie speaks the way no one speaks in real life. The same goes for nearly all the rest: they bring stage-drama performances into every movie, so much that it FEELS like they are acting, like they are playing, literally. Sadly the drama-stage acting tradition has become entrenched and is now too late to change. Even the audience now understand and compensate for missing emotions most times. 

Colour is good, as is gele, Ankara, heavy makeup and the new obsession with cinematography. But can we really have the basic called good acting? Maybe that is why only about 5 of our actors have made it to the global stage. Maybe good acting can improve our Oscar aspirations. And it doesn’t cost a lot for a start.