NGANÙ is finally available. On Netflix! Entering in the very closed circle of Cameroonian films present in the catalog of the American firm. We watched the movie with great excitement and we deliver what we thought of this bold feature film. Spoiler alert.
Announced several months ago, the Cameroonian film NGANÙ is finally available on the Netflix Streaming platform. Directed by Cameroonian filmmaker Kang Quintus, the film tells the story of Nganù (not to be confused with the one who beats people to live) a man of extreme violence who lives in a small village in Cameroon. He subjected his partner and his son to atrocious physical and psychological torture. Mocked and feared by the other villagers, he decides to enlist in the army to channel his violence and cast out his demons. But back in his village things have changed drastically.
Hereditary violence
The film begins with a young boy watching his father break his mother’s skull with a stick. It is a flashback, and it is this little boy who has become an adult (Nganù) who remembers this scene of rare violence. A few minutes later it is Nganù who is brutalizing his partner before the helpless eyes of his son Kum. A brutal introduction that plunges us directly into what will be the general atmosphere of the film, violence. And especially the hereditary transmission of violence.
To tell this transmission of violence, the film is constructed in 4 major acts. In the first, Nganù beats his wife, gets high, beats his wife again in front of their son, gets high, brutalizes people in the village… A real terror. To be mistaken, it even seems that Nganù is none other than a copy or an extension of Solomon (main character of The Fisherman’s Diary also played by Kang Quintus). What is this obsession with violence? Here we have the sometimes cliché and wobbly portrait of a violent man whose origins of violence stem from what he saw his father do in the past. The second act of the film takes Nganù to a military camp, he decided to answer the call for recruitment launched by the army to fight against Boko Haram. He sees an opportunity to channel his anger and perhaps tame it. At the end of this military training, Nganù returns to his village being transformed. Physically and psychologically. Only here is history sinning. What is really behind this radical change? Is it just training? As you can see, the demons of Nganù are so strong that he even hits his instructor, that he has panic attacks and anxiety during the exercises. Is it just this exchange of punishment and this little conversation in the dormitory with his comrade played by Haakim Kae-Kazim that was able to turn this violent man into a man with so much self-control? We have serious doubts.
This is the beginning of the third act and actually it is here that the film begins! Because Nganù returns and finds that his partner married another and that his son became a kingpin, the great “Kumisco”. Witnessing the violence perpetrated by his father, he followed the same path. Besides, this is not a surprise, because the writers [Kang Quintus, Enah Johnscot and Proxy Buh] in an ingenious way had already prepared us for this. When Nganù leaves for the training, Kum watches him leave and goes to sit in his chair and thus symbolically inherits the violence of his father of which he was already the witness. Only Kum correctly interpreted by Gareth Ayuk, will not direct violence to a woman but will turn to drugs and banditry. A real painting of the current Cameroonian youth carried away by drugs because having no more family model and growing up in a violent society where everyone fights to survive. The climax of this transmission of violence comes when Kum, carried away by drugs, violently slaps his father and he does not react, simply observing the monster he himself created by his behavior. It’s brutal, sitting on our seat we feel the shock and it works!
Redemption
Nganù then tries to win back as awkwardly as possible his wife and son in the last act of the film. But, the son who dreamed of being a tailor, dreams today under the influence of drugs, to be a governor and ironically, to eradicate children from the streets. Nganù at least wants to save his son since he can no longer save his couple. Especially since Kum has alienated his own gang. This gang which alerts the village and decides to burn the house of Nganù. Another beautiful symbol, this house, high place of the transmission of violence that is carried away by the flames. This sequence finds its beauty when the members of the furious gangs throw a Molotov cocktail on the famous transmission chair that sits in the middle of the living room. All filmed in close-up, magnificent! A destruction that announces the break of these hereditary links of violence. Obviously, as in real life, in cinema too things do not always end well. But the end of Nganù is absolutely effective and shows us that redemption has a price and this price is sometimes to bear the consequences of the acts that we have done.
Apart from the first two acts of the film which are weak in terms of writing, the film takes all its importance from the second half of the film. The film paints a Cameroonian society marked by all kinds of violence, the destruction of the family unit and drugs. But above all the film approaches the father and son relationship in a unique way as it is very rare to see in Cameroonian films. Where Enah Johnscott’s The Fisherman’s Diary (2020) presented violence and its causes, NGANÙ tries to present the causes of violence but especially its sometimes irreversible consequences. Violence is hereditary and if you’re not careful, it destroys everything in its path. But above all, one can redeem oneself not without losing something. The film also wants to be “patriotic” insofar as it is the passage through the military formation that transforms Nganù. An idealized approach of the army but also a discovery on the screen of how military training takes place in Cameroon.
Kang Quintus and Gareth Ayuk are masterful!
The making of the film is done without frills. It is simple and effective enough to let us live the story and especially the performance of the actors. Kang Quintus and Gareth Ayuk are masterful in their performance! Nothing else could be added! We also discover the famous Cameroonian urban artist Ko-c en brigand and also, with a tear in the eye, the late Cabrel Nanjip to whom the film is dedicated. We will not forget to mention the presence of Hakim Kae-kazim whose effective and sober game reflects his great experience and whose presence in the film has a commercial scope. Technically the film is quite basic but offers us some moments of lightning like this scene of confrontation and reconciliation between Nganù and Kum filmed with this camera that revolves around them and that takes us into the emotional whirlwind that can well occur in the head of a father who sees his son pointing a gun at him and a son who sees his father pointing a gun at him. It is powerful and effective. Unfortunately the director [and his co-director Musing Derick] breaks the rhythm of this sequence, moves the actors and redeposits the camera on tripod for an end of sequence a little bit boring. We will blame the film for its mix its not accomplished, its makeup a little risky, this flaw in the writing but also this shadow of The Fisherman’s Diary still visible. Let’s hope that for his next film, Kang Qintus will be freed from this shadow of permanent violence.
NGANÙ is a film to see because it is the film of a filmmaker who dares, who takes a stand and makes a real painting of society, a film that speaks of redemption, a film that speaks of the consequences of our actions. A film that appeals!
The film is available exclusively on Netflix
Rostand Wandja
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