Film Review - Ezra: Sacrifice of the Young

What greater tragedy is there than the corruption of innocence? This is the tragedy that unfolds in heartbreaking detail in Nigerian director Newton Aduaka’s film Ezra, screened at the 2008 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles. Winner of the 2007 Yennenga Award for Best Film at the African Film Festival, FESPACO, Ezra makes an important statement about a growing problem of war, the psychological damage wrought by diminishing armies on the children they kidnap for use as soldiers.

Aduaka, who has at least four other feature films and various shorts to his credit, raises our awareness of what it’s like to be a child of war in Africa. Through a series of flashforwards and flashbacks told by both the protagonist Ezra, and his sister, we get two different perspectives of a horrendous, unavoidable situation and the psychological struggle of countless children in many African warring nations. The film opens with two scenes that cut back and forth between a happy seven-year-old Ezra running to school and the interior of a classroom and teacher writing a lesson on the blackboard portentously entitled “Why I love my country.” Ezra’s sister is at her desk looking out the window for her tardy brother when we see Ezra running towards the school. It is eerily quiet except for the sounds of children beginning their writing exercise. Suddenly, soldiers appear and begin shooting and dragging screaming children, including Ezra, from the school into the bush. The film continues with scenes of indoctrination by adult soldiers as innocence is systematically destroyed. When one little boy asks what they are fighting for the reply is: “Justice. There is no justice in this country, only through the barrel of the gun.” The film is excellent in its realism here as the faces of the children look genuinely fearful and the brainwashing tactics are believable. Ezra’s story begins when he whispers to another boy, “To survive you have to do everything you are told. You have to be a good soldier.”

Though non-linear, the film’s story line is, for the most part, fairly easy to follow. Some scenes make more sense later such as when Ezra is standing on top of his own parent’s home that he helps to destroy because we ultimately find out that he is drugged. This becomes clearer towards the latter part of the film in two or three short scenes of white American drug traffickers and British military personnel. The British military are briefly seen providing strategic help to the African government army trying to suppress the rebel army. The Americans are briefly seen selling meth-amphetamines that are given to soldiers to promote aggression and delete any memory of their actions so they are able to continue their violent acts. Both of these scenes, though fleeting, seem to be a reminder that the white man is still running the show and add nuance to what is happening to Ezra. There are many-layered, historical reasons for this situation in Africa, and the film does a good job incorporating responsible parties on all sides without pointing the finger at just one.

Throughout the film, flashforwards show Ezra as a sixteen-year-old living in a facility that helps children heal from their psychological wounds and reintegrate into society. We are also introduced to Ezra’s sister at a hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up in 1995 in South Africa by the UN after Apartheid to “reveal and heal” the psychological affects of the atrocities that soldiers committed between 1960 and 1994. Ezra is reunited with his sister when he comes back to his home as an older soldier, and throughout the film she is privy to much of his atrocities. Although she is not kidnapped, Ezra’s sister is another kind of victim of war as she is brutalized by a rebel soldier who cuts out her tongue. She is asked to be witness at Ezra’s TRC hearing revealing things that Ezra cannot remember doing, and this enhances the complexity of their relationship.

In a creative metaphor used by Aduaka for those familiar with Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Africa’s most famous book about the disastrous affects of colonization, we witness the eventual melting of Ezra’s emotional and intellectual wall that he has created to survive. He begins to question the authority of his kidnappers and the real meaning of what he is doing when he admits to identifying with a young boy in the novel who gets sacrificed because of an indigenous African tribe’s unquestioning allegiance to tradition. Ezra is beginning to become aware that he is being sacrificed by his country for diamonds. In such a way, the film seems to reify the idea that war endlessly waged since the colonization of Africa has almost become tradition in the minds of those who have never lived in peace. In the end, the TRC is shown to be quite impotent at restoring a victim’s psychological health from the army’s brainwashing methods and affects of war. A committee member of the Commission says that a soldier “must admit his crime before he can find peace with his ancestors.” Ezra replies, “I don’t remember. I cannot say what you want me to say.”

The interrelations of the main characters are multifaceted and give the film an intellectual depth that is true to its premise. Other than one scene in the army camp of soldiers dancing to reggae music, there is surprisingly little music in the film. Because music touches a deep emotional place, perhaps Aduaka’s film might have benefited from more of it. As it is though, Aduaka does a good job at illustrating, not only the corruption of innocence, but the level of evil perpetrated on children of war that can never be assuaged.

Musings on "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

Here is a (hopefully-not-too-boring) character sketch of Ekwefi, the leading female in Achebe's novel...

Through the thoughts of the Commissioner at the end of the novel, Achebe illustrates how Euro-centric views of Africa reduce the complex life of its people to mere sketches of humanity. While Okonkwo is described by one of his own people as “one of the greatest men in Umuofia,” the Commissioner defines him only as a “man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself” (208). In response to reductive, insidious, and destructive Euro-views of African nations and their people, Achebe assigns incredible depth to his characters with minimal narrative. To me, the character of Okonkwo’s second wife, Ekwefi, is full of complexities. Although I am a white female living in an American post-modern world, and may lack much cultural capital that would most likely deepen my appreciation of her, I find Ekwefi’s character full of subtleties. She is not simple by any means.

To me, Ekwefi represents strength and courage as seen through the hardships she bears in clan life, and through the complex connections and choices of living within a society’s rituals, traditions, gender roles and laws. Although Ekwefi does not appear much in the second and third part of the novel except for preparing the feast to leave Mbanta, she and her daughter (who is portrayed to be so much like her) are strong characters and given more importance than other females in the novel, illustrating a less common patriarchal characterization of African society. Okonkwo’s first wife is always referred to as “Okonkwo’s first wife” or as “Nwoye’s mother” (40). “Of his three wives Ekwefi was the only one who would have the audacity to bang on [Okonkwo’s] door” (76). She has her own mind and does not always obey the rules of gender.

Ekwefi defies the traditional marriage ceremony by leaving her first husband “two years after her marriage” because “she could bear it no longer and…ran away to Okonkwo” who she fell in love with after watching his wrestling match (39). We might assume there was no bride-price or marriage ceremony, which meant that Okonkwo felt equally strong towards Ekwefi. But because Achebe does not inform us of the details of this situation, and there is no mention of any consequence, we might assume that “justified divorce” is a pardonable course of action in this society.

While we see Okonkwo as a character who displays a strong, hard, unemotional outer self hiding an inner more emotional side, we might see Ekwefi as his opposite; her emotions plainly displayed while at the same time strong enough to survive what might easily destroy others. Losing one child for many mothers would be enough to defeat them, but Ekwefi, who has “suffered a great deal in her time” (40) losing nine out of the ten children she bore, finds the strength to continue. Achebe allows the reader insight into her strength by describing the complex emotional and mental states of despair, resignation and bitterness that she passes through during this time of loss. These are all understandable emotions. Adding that “her bitterness did not flow outwards to others but inwards into her own soul; that she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil chi” (79) shows a depth of feeling in her character that connects her to tradition and responsibility.

For the most part, Ekwefi is motivated by the beliefs and traditions of her clan, but never seems to accept them passively. When Ezinma has lived longer than her other children, Ekwefi “believed deep inside her that Ezinma had come to stay. She believed because it was that faith alone that gave her own life any kind of meaning” (80). Her strength comes from this traditional belief that her god, her “chi,” will allow Ezinma to survive. When Ekwefi finally is assured of this after they find Enzima’s “iyi-uwa,” she allows herself to feel love again, but cannot relax. Ezinma is “the center of her mother’s world”…and Ekwefi has “put all her being into” taking care of her (79). The deaths of her previous children and her devotion to her only surviving child have engraved a mental and emotional state of constant anxiety and fear for Ezinma’s survival. Ekwefi cannot be completely assured that her “chi” will not take Ezinma. This fear and anxiety seems to motivate much of her actions.

Although Ekwefi does adhere to the traditional female role in this society by being part of a family with multiple wives expected to produce offspring and attend to those typical duties, in many further respects she does not comply with the traditional female gender role. Achebe describes her relationship with her daughter as both mother and contemporary: “Ezinma did not call her mother Nue like all children…the relationship between them was not only that of mother and child. There was something in it like the companionship of equals” (76). This is a multi-dimensional mother/daughter relationship that defies stereotype. In addition, Ekwefi questions the authority of the clan, Okonkwo, Chielo and the gods when she decides to follow Chielo who takes Ezinma into the forest. Chielo warns her not to go: “How dare you, woman, to go before the mighty Agbala of your own accord? Beware…lest he strike you in his anger” (101). But she does not heed this danger to herself and defies even an angry god who could kill her. Okonkwo does not stop her when she declares, “I am following Chielo” (103), which implies her own authority with Okonkwo and in the family. Nor is she punished for this, which Achebe may have utilized to indicate that questioning authority is allowed in this society. She does not think to ask for help from Okonkwo and takes on the responsibility of Ezinma alone. This action of Ekwefi, who is already constantly filled with fear and anxiety, shows immense strength and courage. She not only fears for her daughter’s safety, but she goes into a forest she believes to be filled with “evil essences…She would wait at the mouth, all alone in that fearful place. She thought of all the terrors of the night” (104). This certainly demonstrates determination, devotion, strength, defiance and courage. Ekwefi is ultimately a survivor, stronger than Okonkwo, who chooses death rather than fight for survival in the end.

Very first blog ever...

Here's the first of (at least) seven blogs of African Film and Lit. Never wrote a blog before. My name is Wendy and I know nothing about Africa, but have always wanted to go. So, I'm looking forward to learning about Africa through its film and literature in this class.