Wole Soyinka wrote Death and the King's Horseman in 1975. Kunle Afolayan...
Naija Entertainment News@naijaentertainmentnews
1 day ago
Wole Soyinka wrote Death and the King's Horseman in 1975. Kunle Afolayan brought it to screen in 2022. The wait was worth it.
Odunlade Adekola as Elesin, the king's horseman who is bound by tradition to follow his king into death, gives one of the most complex performances in modern Nollywood history. He must play a man who genuinely believes in his duty and also genuinely does not want to die. Both things are true simultaneously. Adekola holds that tension without resolution because Soyinka never resolved it either.
The film is an adaptation but it is also a document. Of Yoruba ritual. Of colonial interruption. Of what happens when an outside power decides that another culture's sacred obligations are superstitions to be corrected.
Afolayan treats the source material with reverence without being imprisoned by it. This is filmmaking that knows what it is doing and why.
Rating: 9/10. Essential.
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