Nigerian Movies on Netflix – Elesin Oba

Nigerian Movies on Netflix – Elesin Oba; the King’s Horseman is the story of a chief at Oyo whose primary reason for living is to die with the King, once proclaimed dead. Elesin Oba decided to enjoy himself for the last time properly, before embarking on the journey of no return. Thereby, procrastinating his destiny, and letting the mischief white colonisers steal away his destiny. Nigerian Movies on Netflix – Elesin Oba; the King’s Horseman was directed by the late novelist and filmmaker, Biyi Bandele. Lead character of the film, Elesin Oba was acted by popular Nollywood film actor, Odunlade Adekola, sub lead by Shaffy Bello, the popular Afro beat singer Brymo are amongst others who brought the story to life.

I saw this movie yesterday and felt “oh my goodness”. It is a Masterpiece, a poem well written by an agbawo poet. I love the beautiful poetic lines which was well put together and rendered romantically by the actors. The way each and every of the actors delivered their lines made me fell in love more and more with the movie as each scenes unfold.

This type of movie is not an every audiences’ type of movies. It is an Art, and only a very good artist can connect with it. That particular scene where a britiko and his wife was dancing in a masquerade’s gown, I’ve pictured that scene in my head for more than five years, seeing it in a movie was one of the beautiful things that happened to me yesterday. I love every bit of this movie, truly. But, they made some huge blunders, I won’t lie.

As a sign of respect for the late filmmaker who directed the movie, I won’t eat much into criticism of this beautiful work. The biggest of the blunders the people in charge of making the movie made was identity theft.

I want to believe they intentionally stole the identity of the said tribe in this movie by not portraying the Oyo people properly. During the time of occurrence of this story, it will be very hard for you to walk pass ten people without counting at least nine of them with a tribal mark. Tribal marks then was a trending fashion thing which you can not take away from these people. It is part of their beautifications, it is a culture, life and tradition. Why will the film director or whoever is in charge of decision making not implement this into the film? It rendered the whole movie baseless and stupid. You are preaching against identity theft and you digitally embraced the art of “teacher no dey teach me nonsense”. No!

Another major part of erroneous blunder was casting. I don’t know what Brymo was doing there as olohun iyo. That role should have been properly given to someone who befits. Ajobiewe would have been a perfect cast for that role. So is also the role of Iya loja. Come on, a light in complexion Iya loja? You gotta be kidding me. Another error of identity verification

I really have a lot to say about the poor management of making this beautiful art, but like I said earlier, in respect for the late Director, I won’t tear it down much. But I really do love this movie so much. it’s one of the few movies that I saw which made me feel emotional. I love the message it passes on. I like the costuming too. And I hope we get to do better than what we’ve been doing as storytellers. Elesin Oba is the first Nigerian film that got so into me that I was really drained and down emotionally. I will be rating it 4.5stars out of 5stars. The late Biyi Bandele is an enigma and a very great artist whose work will continue to live on. Thank you, you can read more about my reviews here.