Beyond the carnage, Jagun Jagun (Warrior) offers a daring elocution of the Nigerian story rendered from a Yoruba perspective.
The movie satirises the Nigerian riddle, showing in 174 minutes, how the nation flails to torrid interests and the jarring cynicism of political actors, all working their selfish angles. Politics, in the movie, stews to a scalding broth as rival interests split private terraces and public courts in vulgar gladiatorship.
The rogue kings may be said to be driven by selfish interests which aren’t solely patriarchal as curious rabble would have you believe – the presence of the female regent in the cabal of monarchs cum power grabbers is the narrative’s subtle way of depicting greed as a human foible, and not solely a male affliction.
Ogundiji’s student warriors and mercenary force, on their part, may be said to be driven by conflicting interests: some patriotic, some selfish. Gbotija (Lateef Adedimeji) for instance, is driven by his quest to avenge the death of his father who was slain in cold blood by Ogundiji (Femi Adebayo)’s marauding force. His vendetta eventually meshes with his sheer lust to have Iroyinogunkiitan (Bukunmi Oluwashina) for keeps. This eventually leads him on a life-defining quest. Yoked supernaturally to the woods, Gbotija flaunts mythical prowess that eventually manifests through the narrative.
Adebayo offers an alternative perspective even as he portrays our foibles through a more powerful and engaging lens. Jagun Jagun offers a sentimental recall of the fabled strength of the ancient Yoruba Generalissimos who wielded the sword to hack their paths to infamy or renown.
Read Also: Makinde presents N70m Prado Jeep to Saheed Osupa
The spirited usage of oriki, plain-woven proverbs, and idioms, imbue the narrative with poetic resonance. While the plot initially hangs loose at the helm, it garners appreciable heft and coherence as it unfurls. Some remarkable twists in the plot depict Adebayo and the movie’s director, Adebayo Tijani’s coming of age: Ogundiji’s morphing from a presumed saviour who neuters Jigan (Odunlade Adekola), a minor mercenary and murderer of helpless monarch Oniketo (Muyiwa Ademola)’s crown prince before his very eyes, to a blood-thirsty warlord is unanticipated.
Ogundiji’s subsequent deployment of Gbogunmi (Ibrahim Yekini) and Agemo as war mercenaries illustrates his might and consolidate his hold on the coterie of kings who patronise and pay homage to him for the gift of his protection.
Erinfunto (Fathia Balogun) and Morohunmubo (Bimbo Ademoye), Ogundiji and Gbogunmi’s wives fulfil the oft-hackneyed trope of how wives of the most powerful figures constitute their nemesis in common hours.
Adebayo’s meta-theatrical integration of rhetoric and narrative authority to his Yoruba roots manifests in Gbotija’s tirade to his fellow warriors cum students in Ogundiji’s war theatre, it resonates in his rant while demanding better meals and welfare from Iroyinogunkiitan’s maidens, and also in his defiant plaint while being flogged on a stake. It equally resonates with Gbogunmi’s cheeky and direct address to the viewer in his soliloquy.
These spurts of imaginativeness validate Adebayo’s deployment of his creative depth to assert ownership of his craft.
What shouldn’t we do for an evergreen story? What shouldn’t we give? Evergreen storylines make up the fabric of our collective narrative; when progressively spun, they are endlessly fascinating, yielding fresh insights through the imagination of the writer or filmmaker, who milks history and recalibrates reality to espouse a positive national lyric.
What is the Nigerian lyric? What is our reality? The superiority of Western values is one of the supreme constructions of imperialism and the poisonous elixir of Nigeria and her neighbours on the African continent.
Nigerian writers and filmmakers, for too long, have struggled to acculturate our landscape with such defective foreign mores. Thus they corrupt their presentations and stifle the possibility of attaining homegrown, practicable solutions to oft-politicised conflict.
Nonetheless, they have a dedicated industry of cheerleaders and courtiers who romanticise their follies as the valiance sorely needed to reinvigorate Nigeria’s creative sector.
Themes glorifying repulsive gender wars, mindless youth rebellion, and the orchestration of deviant social hierarchies are aggressively projected and patronised to the detriment of rational, progressive, and didactic art.
This hurts us immeasurably as otherwise brilliant and perceptive filmmakers denounce and attack their homeland. They corrupt our artistic vocabulary, twisting it into a meditation on society’s debauched nature. Ultimately, they celebrate degeneracy via aggressive cues of prurient art, promiscuity, gendered storms, and virulent sexuality suggested to them by foreign consulates and NGOs.
It’s about time the government partnered with the creative arts sector to reinvent the Nigerian story while channelling humane governance and patriotism. This is not a call for government censorship of progressive art. Rather it’s a call for institutionalised support via public-spirited funding and ideological partnership.
Adebayo’s Jagun Jagun is a searing satire replete with cues in Nigeria’s search for redemption in a world more noted for malice than goodness, thus his creation of alternate universes populated with creatures amenable to his cause to reignite patriotic Nigeria.
Politics, however subtle, lies at the heart of every critique of Jagun Jagun, as it subsists in the consideration of every art form. But foisting foreign notions of how a Yoruba or Nigerian narrative should flow only further codifies the mental subjugation we must abhor.
For the first time ever, the social space enthuses the brilliance and artistry of a movie project and some interesting characters score it “zero” and “below average,” claiming they are “hard to please.” Such characters manifest as a social curse and must be ignored by the cast and crew of Jagun Jagun and every movie buff.
Arguments about what constitutes the true Yoruba story or historical narrative pirouette from the meta-colonial mentality and inferiority complex of many a reviewer who deems his or her spurious take on the movie as some gospel truth.
Many claim to have earned their doctorate on a similar theme. Yet no one knows of their thesis. On the other hand, Adebayo’s Jagun Jagun, is the most telling dissertation at the moment on the semiotics of Nigerian art. Of course, his thesis isn’t complete. He must wield more convincingly and imaginatively, his muse, and the burden of expectations of his teeming fans.
Perhaps the movie’s sequel and a host of other offerings would, in time, consolidate the genius of Adebayo and his crew. His brilliant introduction of Ikulende Agbarako (Ibrahim Chatta) at the film’s climax fulfills appreciably its seductive intent.
Most reviews speak to the perceived inferiority of the Nigerian storyteller and of the Nigerian people – something Europeans have convinced themselves and subsequently convinced us was endemic to Africa – this simply makes it easier for them to validate their political and economic agendas through sociocultural weaponry.
The idea that Femi Adebayo’s Jagun Jagun misrepresented aspects of Yoruba history is plausible yet forgivable in the light of the rigour, politics and pragmatism required in producing a movie of its magnitude. And despite apparent flaws in the movie’s plot, even its most bitter critics must appreciate the depth of research and artistry committed to its production. The costuming, score and digital effects, to mention a few, were brilliantly marshalled to meld with the fast-paced plot.
Yet the most toxic critics harp on its minor defects, highlighting them as unforgivable deficits of the movie. At least folk are talking about it and “scholars” are interrogating it.
And that is why Adebayo gets a seat at the table, while his most virulent critics jostle for wiggle room in an overcrowded soapbox.
