The Woman King

There’s quite a lot to say about this film before we get into the film itself. It’s set in a real, historical African kingdom, Dahomey, at a time when it really was throwing off the shackles of being a tribute state of another African empire, the Oyo, and becoming a major power in its own right. A lot of the story follows a group of women warriors, the Agojie, who were real. However, the titular Woman King, Nanisca, is fiction. Although at this time the Dahomey were a tribute state, they went on to be a fierce raiding empire, capturing and selling others into slavery. At this point their struggle seems pretty heroic but, overall, their empire seems to be not one of the good guys. Does that mean we shouldn’t tell this story? I don’t think so. I learnt something about this empire and their wider history which is a good thing. But I’m not sure my voice matters in this, my ancestors weren’t enslaved by the Dahomey of a later period after all. I don’t know how important it is, but in addition to almost all the cast, the director is also a WOC.

A quick aside. I’ve seen a line of commentary that runs “this is why we don’t let the gays and the women make movies.” Followed by finger pointing at Olivia Wilde, Patty Jenkins and Nicholas Stoller (the director of Bros who I’ve never heard of before, and will probably never hear of again outside of this context). This is tied, more or less implicitly, to the implication that straight, white men can take criticism while no one can criticise women, LGBTQIA+ people or POC for fear of being cancelled. But here we have another film, alongside Everything, Everywhere, All at Once and a string of successes from Chloé Zhao, and others where the film works well, spectacularly so in the case of Nomadland. There are straight men who are jerks on set too, and before MeToo they did get to make more films, now they don’t, at least not as often. The gay men and the women I’ve name checked probably won’t either… and others won’t if they’re not up to it. That’s not misogyny and homophobia, whatever they say. At least as long as the industry continues to give people from all backgrounds the chances and the ones that are up to the challenge more opportunities. I’d happily watch another film from this director please. I am not saying it’s perfect but we have bad filmmakers and good ones, regardless of every other factor. As long as they system rewards the good ones, not the white male ones, and it is slowly moving that way, that’s OK. (There is a separate post about how quickly it needs to move (faster) and the like but it is definitely moving that way.)

Finally, the film carries warnings for racism, strong injury detail, violence and sexual violence. It’s set during the slave trade, if you don’t like that, you’re not going to like this. But the other manifestations of racism are basically absent, and the racism we see is not something that (with the usual proviso that I’m white so I’m speaking from the wrong side of the fence here) that I found worrying. The fact that basically everyone on set was a POC might reassure you that this is handled really quite carefully if it’s a strong trigger for you. There’s a lot of fighting with swords and spears, cut throats and the like. It didn’t feel brutal to me but YMMV. Part of the story is Nanisca's capture and rape many years ago, and her as a survivor. We see flashbacks to that in her memory that walk a delicate line where it’s clear what is happening while, thankfully, showing nothing. It’s heads moving and a chained ankle and so on. If you’re super-triggered by rape scenes you might still be triggered by this. It’s one of my triggers but I was ok with how this was shot. Again YMMV.

On to the film proper.

I think the title The Woman King is a little misleading. We do follow Nanisca's journey from leader of the Agojie to the titular Woman King. Viola David plays Nanisca. So she’s present throughout the film and carries it much like Florence Pugh in Don't Worry Darling, right? No, there is at least one, probably several characters we spend more time time than Nanisca. Really not what I expected. I get that The Agojie is not such a great title - would I have gone to see it? Maybe, but The Woman King pulled me in more reliably. But, really, this was much more a story about the Agojie. We have a new recruit who we follow through training, we have a senior officer who takes the new girl under her wing and helps her get through it all. And we see them go to war. In that sense you could argue this is an African Feminist Full Metal Jacket It’s got a very different tone, but structurally we follow people through training for the marine corpsAgojie, then fighting in a few battle scenes.

Of course we have a view on the history of the Dahomey (as opposed to the history of Americans in Vietnam), a take on female friendship (which is very different to the take on male bonding in Full Metal Jacket) and lots of on-going story that is quite different.

This film weaves its various narrative strands together well and although it runs over two hours, it doesn’t feel over long. Part of that is that it changes pace nicely. There are a mixture of slower scenes that establish parts of the story and more about the character. The fight scenes are fast-paced, pretty to watch and all have a narrative value - they tell things about the story. Also, like in Mad Max: Fury Road these are practical fights, real people doing stunt work. It makes a difference and that shows.

I really enjoyed this film. There is a lot here that is really good. While I understand the complaints others have about the film, if you just want to watch it as entertainment it serves that purpose. I would have enjoyed on that level. Thanks to the controversy of choosing the Dahomey I learnt more about a piece of African history that, in truth, I probably wouldn’t have known to look up without this film. I enjoyed it more because of that.

Bechdel Test: Pass. It’s relatively hard to find conversations that don’t pass in fact. They are there but probably 90% of them do.

Ko Test: Pass. Every female character is a WOC and while a few of the extras might not pass all of the leads certainly do. There are a few times where they sing, chant or similar in a language other than English - if you imagine going to high church and doing your prayers in Latin, it landed like that, although obviously not in Latin - but almost all of the film has them speaking English. Ironically, at least in terms of this test, it’s the (broadly speaking) white - I think both actors would call themselves Latino - men who speak in a non-English language (Brazilian Portuguese) and have subtitles. Given speaking English as a WOC is about status it’s an interesting twist.

Russo Test: Fail. I find it almost impossible to belief that in a community of all women, literally no men allowed and no sexual relationships with men allowed, there is no sapphic love going on. But we certainly don’t see any.