October Zero | Film Review | October 1

BENEATH sheer adulations, the excitement and vaunted theme of new repute; Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 is a shrill call for reparations. The clarion motif is, in itself, sketched from the earth of The Killer – that innately troubled ‘Agara’ who, before a country’s independence, ‘must be smoked out’, lest a vibrant Akote be shrivelled by fear and distrust. While it should be applauded, the ability of Kunle to merge history with entertainment yet steering away from hyperbolic overtones; the Nigerian mind, imbued with the surviving story – the single story – of an all-chaste road to Independence, therefore, finds a rather curious melody around this film noir. 

It sets the butt on edge. Curious Melody? One of the bucolic undergrowth? Of the murders of young virgins? Or of collective anticipation of national triumph? Perhaps, Inspector Danladi Waziri, who is the nut wedged in the mesh of events, is solely in tune. Although, all of these landscapes create an intense story devoid of speed, triteness and stereotypes; the extenuation of colonial scars and its seal in time is a big part of October 1.

The title works as the movie's sub-plots – impeccably disparate – proceed evenly and gather momentum to birth sudden realizations. Every corner in the movie is prone to suddenness; the turbulent cusp of independence, the encounter with dead bodies, the departure for greener pastures aboard, a town’s part turning against the whole, a desperate propitiation, a prince’s guile. Before Independence Day, a detective is charged with solving a serial-murder crime in far far away Akote. The suddenness in his discovery is the very tremor that rocks the scene and from that probing stretch of days, that preceding space of truth – that is, October Zero – the Curious Melody rings back in time. 

In that Melody is a definition for the essence of ‘October 1’ as an abstract property of the Nigerian mind; and it is easy to assume that this voice of contention is directly that of the scriptwriter. Anyway, the voice is a recurring one and, more importantly, bugles the need for national reflection and restitution of lost ideals – the lost mores, the lost industries and the lost spirit of Africa since the white men came.

Among the ebb and tide of action and suspense, The Killer is the reagent. Yet, he, too, is lost, lost like his country, his people who have, for long, witnessed the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. Although he is ‘deranged, devoid of human compassion’, he ‘struggles with a deep-seated inner crisis’. The complexity of this individual insurgency makes a case for the very nature of the State, that is, Nigeria.

In fact, the import of the entire movie is an aesthetic conversation between dual orbits – one of The Killer and of The Country. To hear the dialogue, one only has to trace each interlocutor on the divide between aspirations and transitions; and once this is done, one has to heed the Melody that comes echoing, stirred by bitter truths. One has to heed anguish, heed the innocence of pain, of a promising Nigerian boy seeking education yet led to the dark pit of violation, or, even more precariously, a promising Nigeria seeking independence yet led to its own battlefield.

The substance of The Killer is not rationed solely by local connotation. Indeed, it raises a question of universal appeal, one that transcends Nigeria’s Akote to probe the nature of human and national development on deterministic scales.  For Nigeria, it is this: ‘When did independence begin or, as in yet another rendering, did it ever start?’ To co-opt a perpetual variance of Prince Aderopo’s prediction: ‘Are we at war with ourselves?’  

The answer is also a property of the Nigerian mind, as is the question. However, in some shades beneath a thriller’s gusto, Kunle Afolayan succeeds in animating the ideals of a hopeful Nigerian nation, ideals such as unity, freedom and democracy. He does this by defying stereotypes; and, once for a dare, a country’s story is resolutely about its ordinary people than the cream of the crop. It is why I have refused to resent the silence of the character of Mrs. Olufunmi Ransome Kuti or the choice of a lettered Northerner as detective or the funeral rites of respect for a young Ibo girl (Chidinma) on Yoruba earth or – stressing this – the poising of Religion on a delicate axis, one that has, according to Wole Soyinka, proved it again and again a spur, a motivator and a justification for the commission of some of the most horrifying crimes against Humanity, despite its fervent affirmations of peace.

The presence of all of this calls for emulation, for an opening of the mind to the grave realities of nationhood that has undergone a grave history – an October Zero – a space of time from where it all started.

‘And there is no limit to how that mind can open!’ Kunle’s film shouts.

First published in Image Magazine of the University of Ibadan.

Photo credit: Kunle Afolayan