I watched this yesterday.
For some reason people are obsessed testing its “historical accuracy” and honestly, I don’t get it. I mean, I get the need to feel like historical accuracy is important but this is not meant to be a documentary, or an educational film. In fact, I think it accomplishes both to some degree even with it’s “historical inaccuracies.”
Although this film follows Nanisca (Viola Davis), the general of the Agojie, mighty female warriors, as they fight back against the controlling empire of the Dahomey and the effects of the slave trade, it’s really a story about parents and what they do for their children.
I’m only going to approach this note from two areas.
(1) The parenting perspective and (2) the historically-accurate-enough-to-spark-an-interest-of-investigation perspective.
Ok, history is raw, uncensored, confusing, enlightening and so much more. But one thing is for certain about history, there never is a clear answer to anything. Everyone is guilty and everyone is not guilty.
In the film, I enjoyed how the “bad guy” was mainly described as people that spoke Portuguese, maybe from Brazil and still acknowledged the Americas and the British. It didn’t paint just one group is the culprits of the trans Atlantic slave trade. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Brazil (Portuguese) portrayed in film in this role. Considering most slaves during the transatlantic slave trade were sold to central and South America, it begs the question how many more people or countries were involved, that we may not know about. This includes the Dahomey as they sold their own people to these slavers. I loved seeing the fights and disagreements between them as the question of morality behind this trade was questioned by Nanisca and her warriors. To go against the common practice of slave trading to invest time and money into palm oil, shows a beautiful part of humanity-our ability to discover morality devoid of Judeo Christian ethics and fight against the norm. Although, the one Portuguese/Dahomey guy, whose name escapes me, wore a necklace with Jesus on a cross and shared romantic moments with Nawi (Thesu Mbedu) makes me wonder if his realization of the immoral practice came from his faith in God or his learning of the fiery spirit inside of Nawi—it’s probably the latter.
Either way you see this, if you want to learn more I bet that before the film, many people didn’t even know this kingdom or these people existed and now we can all be more educated by doing more research and enjoy the parts the film presented while learning the historically accurate parts on our own. Go learn!
The story then becomes more than a fight against colonizers, and more about the moral battle within a group of people from two philosophies, while a mother realizes she still has an opportunity that was once lost—to be a mom again. That’s all I’ll say, to avoid spoilers.
Ok I lied. [SPOILERS AHEAD]
When we discover….
seriously spoiler…
…that Nanisca is Nawi’s mother, she also begins to go against everything she taught her in training. She goes against all that has helped her become the warrior she is to save the life of the daughter she once had lost. This is a beautiful story about love for a child, as well as, trusting your child and their perspective as you face something knew in the world. Often times we parents are stuck in ways of doing things, and children see something new. This is when we should listen, and find the value in their perspective to become better versions of ourselves.
Overall I really enjoyed this film. Yes, even though we’ve seen this story before, it’s dressed in a fresh outfit both appealing in 2022 and damn good action sequences.
Go check it out! Don’t worry too much about “historical accuracies” and enjoy this momentary escape from daily life!