“I don’t make a lot of films...I can only shoot what is essential to me”
--Director Philippe Lacôte in an interview to CNN titled "Machetes and Microbes: Why Philippe Lacôte's Prison Drama Cuts Close to the Bone" (September 8, 2020)
French-Ivorian filmmaker Philippe Lacôte has made two feature films Run (2014) and Night of the Kings (2020), both officially submitted to the Oscar’s foreign language category by Côte d’Ivoire (former name: Ivory Coast), in respective years. Both films provide a marriage of documentary and narrative fiction styles, and both have international actors of repute playing major roles. Run has Côte d’Ivoire-born Isaach de Bankole (Jim Jarmusch’s actor in The Limits of Control/Coffee and Cigarettes/Ghost Dog-The Way of the Samurai; Claire Denis’ actor in White Material/ Chocolat) and Night of the Kings has Denis Lavant (Leos Carax’s actor in Holy Motors/The Lovers on the Bridge); Claire Denis’ actor in Beau Travail) working alongside local non-professionals with elan.
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| The Roman viewing the MACA prison's exteriors on arrival |
Night of the Kings is a film about the first day and night of a new prisoner, whose real name is never revealed/mentioned in the entire film, in Côte d’Ivoire’s infamous prison called La MACA (Maison d'Arrêt et de Correction d'Abidjan). It is an unusual prison—it functions as an open prison, within a closed well-guarded perimeter walls. The prisoners are governed, not by the armed police stationed outside but by a prison inmate who is given the title of Dangoro by other prisoners. The Dangoro (Steve Tientcheu, who had a meaty role in 2019 film directed by Ladj Ly called Les Miserables, an Oscar nominated and Cannes Jury award-winning film) rules over other inmates in accordance with internal rules, laws, and beliefs that one guesses evolved over time by the prisoners. The official prison warden/officials, armed with guns, merely keep watch through small slits in the wall at a vantage point. As the new prisoner is brought to the prison in an open truck with an armed guard seated next to him, the Dangoro assesses the young man who might be 20-years old or even less and announces the new prisoner is the “Roman.” The viewer gradually learns the import of the strange baptized name Roman. A Roman, in the prison, has to wear an impressive gown and narrate tales the entire night to all the Roman’s prison cohabitants just as Scheherazade did to survive in A Thousand and One Nights. In Roman’s case, he learns he has to keep his listeners transfixed overnight to see the sunrise the next day.
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| The ailing Blackbeard is the Dongoro, facing challenge to his leadership in the MACA |
While many viewers will be enraptured by the Roman’s innovative ability to narrate interesting tales woven from his knowledge of Ivorian contemporary street conflicts and his ability to recall Ivorian oral history and tales narrated by his elders as he grew up, the original script of director Lacôte, mirrors more than its face value. What the Roman narrates is a close examination of the violence in Côte d’Ivoire after and between the two civil wars (2002-2007 and 2010-2011), the reasons for that violence, the historical seeds sown over centuries in the minds of Ivorian inhabitants that contribute to the recurring waves of violence, and the internal contemporary politics of the country stated with skill and some camouflage through the Roman’s seemingly innocent storytelling and the parallel events in the prison relating to politics to dethrone the ailing Dongoro and Dongoro’s own plans for his final end-game in line with the internal codes of MACA evolved over time by the prisoners. All this is observed by the warden and his officials and they act as traditional neo-colonial rulers do with knee-jerk reactions, seemingly unable to comprehend the ground complexities.
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| The Roman narrates his stories, wearing the Roman's fine attire as other prisoners listen |
To comprehend the full import of the film, an unusual external event preceding the release of the film, publicized by CNN news channel referred above, needs to be kept in perspective. In December 2019, the film’s director Philippe Lacôte was attacked in the night on the streets of Abidjan (capital of Côte d’Ivoire, by a youth gang armed with machetes referred to in the film as the “microbes,” one of which the Roman in Night of the Kings was purported to have been a member) leaving director Lacôte with injuries on head, hand, and leg that requiring three medical operations to recover somewhat and release the film. Mr Lacôte is an admirable filmmaker crafting his own screenplays. His screenplay for Night of the Kings is entrenched with Ivorian truths, history and folklore that could be allegorical as well.
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| Silence (Denis Lavant) comes to Roman's rescue |
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| Silence helps Roman with ideas to extend his tales |
In order to survive, the Roman begins by narrating somewhat
real events of Zama King, a contemporary leader of microbes, who he is supposed
to have killed, when his real crime was mere pick-pocketing. In order to lengthen
the story telling, the Roman goes back several years describing Zama King and
his blind father in rural Côte d’Ivoire, attacked by armed groups. At the
behest of a well wisher called Silence (Denis Lavant) walking with a hen on his
shoulder in the MACA jail, the Roman adds new characters in Ivorian folklore,
Barbe Noire, a queen with magical prowess, accompanied by soldiers set in a
time zone several centuries prior to the present day. And while Roman is
keeping the prisoners distracted with the stories, there are murders, suicides
and power games among the prisoners to replace the ailing Dangoro on a full
moon night with a new one. Perhaps the goings-on within MACA reflect the
turmoil of Côte d’Ivoire’s socio-political scenario in recent years that forced
the African Development Bank to move its headquarters from Abidjan to Tunisia in
2003 until its eventual return to Abidjan in 2014.
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| An Ivorian queen with an unusual head dress, accompanied by her armed soldiers, is one of the riveting tales of the Roman |
Director Lacôte has written the script with intimate
personal knowledge of the MACA prison. When he was a child, Lacôte’s mother was
a political prisoner in MACA and he would travel in public vehicles to meet
with her inside the “open prison” depicted in Night of the Kings. According
to Lacôte, the ritual of a “Roman” telling stories is real but in reality the “Roman”
is never killed. A quarter of the cast of Night
of the Kings was made up of former MACA inmates to lend authenticity to the
film. Lacôte’s screenplay and the film’s French title further suggests similarities
with the Shakespearean play The Twelfth
Night, where the servants play the masters in a flow of licensed disorder,
just as the Roman holds court while narrating the tales in the MACA. Young Lacôte
apparently noticed some of elements of power play within MACA on his visits to
meet his imprisoned mother. The screenplay also uses the ancient Greek theatre
elements of the chorus as groups of prisoners sing and chant elements of Roman’s
tale in an impromptu fashion.
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| The survivor |
While director Lacôte’s film harks back to Middle Eastern roots of One Thousand and One Nights, another African film Sleepwalking Land made in 2007 in Mozambique, directed by Teresa Prata, adapted novelist Mia Couto’s novel of the same name adding Ms Prata’s personal nods to Melville’s Moby Dick and a distant alluded equivalent of Captain Ahab. So too did French director Claire Denis while cleverly adapting Melville’s Billy Budd in her remarkable film Beau Travail (1999), set in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. All the three films, by three different directors, deal with Africa and the colonial influences in that wonderful, diverse continent. Cinema is able to link them all together like beads in a necklace. Recent films from Africa that include This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) from Lesotho and Night of the Kings from Côte d’Ivoire signify that the continent is proudly exhibiting a resurgence in quality films from unexpected countries not often associated as sources of impressive indigenous cinema.
P.S. Night of The Kings has won two Silver Hugo awards at the
Chicago international festival, one for its cinematography and one for its
sound, the Amplify Voices award at the Toronto international festival, and the Artistic Achievement award at
Thessaloniki (Greece) film festival. The films This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (2019) and Sleepwalking Land (2007) have been reviewed on
this blog earlier. (Click on the names of the films in the post-script to
access the reviews.) This film is one of the author's top 15 films of 2020. The author is one of the contributors of The Directory of World Cinema: Africa (Intellect Books), The author has had the privilege of having visited Côte
d’Ivoire in the Nineties, several times on official work to interact with African Development
Bank officials.
