The worst thing about “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is that title and the precious allegory that comes with it. There’s no need to spell it out because writer-director Rungano Nyoni does that herself in the film’s final minutes. Let’s just say that said allegory reminded me of something that one might encounter in a celebrated short story found in a literary magazine that you admire more in theory than practice: resonant on paper but intellectualized within an inch of its life.
I open with that “but…” in order to get it out the way, as “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is generally a stylish and haunting mood piece, as well as a wrenching family drama. Nyoni leads you to believe that you are watching a traditional coming-of-age movie about a prodigal child returning home to address submerged demons, and you are to a certain extent, but her movie is much tougher than such a description would suggest.
On a road somewhere in the middle of the night in a Zambian community, Shula (Susan Chardy) drives along, leaving a party. She is wearing a glittering helmet with glasses that mask much of her face, and an inflated black romper that invests her initial scenes with an absurdist air. Shula is dressed as Missy Elliot, circa “The Rain,” but once the helmet comes off she suggests a full-sized Oompa Loompa as she tries to discuss severe matters with family that she hasn’t seen in some time. Said severe matters are sparked by Shula discovering her uncle, Fred (Roy Chisha), lying dead in a road.
We know from the outfit and a Zoom meeting and a few other references that Shula is more globalized and modern than her family. This difference in temperament—including distinctions of experience and affluence between someone who “got out” and those whose world is composed of a few miles—is played for comedy and menace. A conflict between globalism and local custom is the film’s macro concern, which is yoked uncomfortably to a story of a community’s oppression by sexual violence. Nyoni’s robust political vision allows multiple sources of tension to coexist within every scene.
A delicate tonal balance between lightness and darkness, masterfully sustained, suggests that Nyoni could be a major filmmaker. Nyoni never quite emphasizes a scene in the manner that you expect, and she understands how family gatherings can sustain and drain you at once. Perhaps most importantly, she maintains an air of mystery around her protagonist and setting.
We are dropped into the bath with Shula as our avatar, forced to figure things out. Aunts and cousins and parents drift in and out of the film’s sharp and teeming compositions, which mix docudramatic textures with surrealism. Fred is a polarizing figure, a drunk and a womanizer who is revealed to be much worse than all that. Yet Fred is spoken of by the elders in the family with reverence, and they are willing to rationalize a wide spectrum of abuse while blaming his child widow for not taking proper care of him.
“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is centered on a patriarchal family and occupied almost entirely by women. This is where the film may stick in people’s’ throats, as it is concerned with roles that women play in propping up a male-driven society. The narrative is structured so that the awfulness at this community’s center gradually rises to the fore, climaxing with an act of humiliation that suggests politically sanctioned wrath. For Americans, the Salem Witch trials may come to mind.
Nyoni screws with our perception of the characters, bending her film’s tone to reflect our own conflicting feelings about family. Shula’s first scene with her father, heard from her side over the phone, is a lovely bit of ridiculous comedy in which he asks for a loan so that he can ostensibly help her with the logistics of handling Fred’s body. The scene is played for humor, though it establishes that this man is not reliable for his daughter.
A bookend scene, near the end of the film, hits the same point from an angle of despair. When Shula leaves her father at an event space, Nyoni frames the moment so that a stairwell bisects Shula, leaving her head off screen with her limbs slumped as her father disappoints her so badly that it may spur a personal reckoning. But there is to be no big catharsis for Shula, who remains an arresting and ambiguous presence. Susan Chardy allows us to see the weight that Shula carries with haunting matter-of-factness.
Though some of Nyoni’s flights of irrationality are misguided, certain surrealist flourishes intensify the film’s dread rather than competing with it, such as when Shula walks through a lawn pockmarked with revelers while a droning emanates from the home. This moment, rooted in Shula’s escalating alienation, would be at home in the work of Val Lewton or David Lynch. By the end of “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” the preciousness of the material has burned away to reveal a scalding, biblical fury.
This year’s shark week season is exacerbated by the 50th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws.” The “Jaws 50” merch offensive has been aggressive, and shark docs are battling the endless true-crime shows for supremacy on the various streamers. Peacock, owned by Universal, the home studio of “Jaws,” even has a “Trouble in the Water” series available for your delectation.
Praising “Jaws” is a cliché at this point, especially if you are a middle-aged male cinephile (guilty). That said, it is as good as Gen X and late millennials make it out to be. I watched it again this weekend and it’s the best of several worlds: a blend of lively 1970s-style character study and monster movie that turns into one of the funniest and most thrilling of American adventure films. It moves like greased lightning, reminding one of how efficient studio movies could be at a time when filmmakers were encouraged to delete scenes rather throwing everything against the wall for 150+ minutes.
Celebrating “Jaws” recently, Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman touched on something that has been nagging me for a while: modern pop movies don’t feel real.
In “Jaws,” the people of the small town that’s being terrorized by the big shark look and sound like people that you might see in a small town. They have real faces and wear ordinary clothes and aren’t played by actors who are hot from a recent streamer series and they do not appear to spend three hours in the gym daily while subjecting themselves to the Paleo diet. The town does not look like a series of sets, and it’s not filmed through a scrim of pristine impersonality that’s more redolent of a screensaver than cinema. Correspondingly, the special effects are not a slather of CGI MSG.
If you think I’m rigging my argument with “Jaws,” one of the most beloved of American movies, then let’s take Joe Dante’s “Piranha,” another title in Peacock’s “Trouble in the Water” series. This 1978 film was shot on the cheap for legendary producer Roger Corman and it is a conscious lark as well as a parody of “Jaws.” Dante would move on to better movies, but even this silly and very fun title is profoundly more atmospheric than most modern productions. When the camera lingers on a camp in the woods, it looks like a camp in the woods. The water looks like actual river water, and the actors suggest people who, once again, work regular jobs for a living. Meanwhile, the score, by Pino Donaggio, is lush and menacing, embodying Dante’s flip yet reverent sensibility.
Lewis Teague’s 1980 “Alligator,” also on Peacock, is similarly inventive and charming and in its weird way in touch with life on Earth. Teague would go on to direct “Cujo,” with some of the most agonizingly convincing animal special effects that I’ve ever seen, which reach a level of verisimilitude that is unimaginable in a 300 million dollar mega-blockbuster, let alone a genre film made down and dirty.
Of course, the 1970s and ‘80s had their unwatchable schlock, too.
If you decide to navigate Peacock’s waters this weekend, stick with “Piranha” and “Alligator” and leave all those embarrassing “Jaws” sequels with the rest of the streaming chum.
“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” is streaming on Max. The “Trouble in the Water” series can be found on Peacock, though movies with sea monsters are available everywhere.
