Anikulapo: A review of Kunle Afolayan’s masterpiece

The now trending Nollywood movie “Anikulapo” directed by Nollywood filmmaker and actor, Kunle Afolayan, has stirred several reactions online with various netizens giving their review of the movie.

Speaking about his latest project, which is showing on the streaming service, Netflix, Kunle Afolayan, via his verified Twitter account, stated that he was glad the world sees the film as a ‘masterpiece’.

I am so pleased and delighted that the whole world have decided to tagged ANIKULAPO film “a masterpiece “ even though the Nigeria Oscar selection committee think it’s not worth submitting for the Oscars 🤷🏽‍♂️

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Will keep making doing my own thing
💪🏾#Oscars #nosc #africancinema pic.twitter.com/RQeYJMMVFh

— Kunleafolayan (@kunleafolayan) October 3, 2022

Afolayan’s ‘Anikulapo’ film tells the tale of an ‘Aso Oke’ weaving traveller, Saro (Kunle Remi), from Gbongan, seeking greener pasture in the old Oyo kingdom. In an unfolding event, he fell in love and had an affair with the Alaafin’s (King) most favourite wife, Arolake (Bimbo Ademoye).

However, their affair was discovered and this made the king (Taiwo Hassan aka Ogogo) order the palace guards to execute the stranger, Saro, for ‘defiling’ his wife.

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Saro, while on the brink of death was saved by his lover who stopped a mystic bird, ‘Eye Apala’, from taking Saro’s soul. In the process, Arolake stole the bird’s powers, which have the ability to resurrect people from the dead.

The movie has been said to be one of the best movies of Kunle Afolayan in the Nollywood industry, beating the likes of his previous works like Citation, Swallow, October 1st, and many others.

Furthermore, on the 3rd of October, the Anikulapo movie was reportedly turned down by the Nigerian Oscars Committee. The academy had considered that Anikulapo didn’t deserve to be nominated despite the commendations it has received since its release.

Although this movie might be a wonderful masterpiece and a greater step in improving Nollywood movies, there might still be some imperfections in the play, which is why we will be reviewing why this movie is a masterpiece and where some of its flaws lie.

Settings

The movie was shot in Oyo State. Considering the story was about the old Oyo kingdom, it was produced and shot by Jonathan Kovel at the recently launched KAP(Kunle Afolayan Productions) a resort in a village in Oyo State,

It was also revealed that Afolayan bought a 40-acre land to produce the movie with all infrastructure and buildings all built from scratch to suit the production. In an Interview, the director described the work as a “Game of Thrones” recreated in Nigeria, but with a better representation of the Yoruba Culture.

However, the statement may not sound right to an avid fan of the HBO series because there is a whole lot of difference in the settings, having a larger number of infrastructure, characters, and buildings.

Visual Effects

A regular Nigerian who is familiar with Nollywood movies would know that the Nollywood industry can be quite poor when it comes to creating visual effects, but Anikulapo made a major impact, exhibiting to the world that the industry has taken a great step in improving its movie quality. The scene where the main character “Saro” was meant to be dead showed where a supernatural bird had revived him from death. This particular bird portrayed looked so real and amazed a lot of viewers due to its perfection.

Language

The language spoken by several characters in the movie was the Yoruba dialect, although, several netizens had cried out that the language wasn’t an Oyo dialect, but just a typical Yoruba language. Meanwhile, a scene in the movie showed when “Saro” (Kunle Remi) was summoned by the Oba (King) Aderoju (Hakeem Kae-Kazim). In this scene, the king played the role of a person who could only speak through the help of his mouthpiece (Asohun Oba).

Although in this part of the movie, it was as if the director was trying to improvise because Kae-Kazim is a British-Nigerian actor and his Yoruba Dialect is not so pure. Meanwhile, they had tried to cover up why he couldn’t speak by giving some excuses for rumours of the king’s background in the past, but was it all just a scheme to cover up his accent?

Characters

The characters also played a major role in this amazing movie, with wonderful costumes, such as the dressings, the tribal marks, hairstyles, and many others. But one would say that the characters were not enough. If one tries to compare the great Oyo Empire in the old days to what was depicted in the movie, the characters weren’t sufficient. Moreover, as the director had described the movie to be a “Game of Thrones” recreation in Nigeria, that statement would be a false one, considering the vast amount of characters in the movie.

Sex Scene

The Anikulapo movie has also stirred several reactions from several netizens concerning the sex scene displayed in the movie. A certain scene in the movie showed where Saro (Kunle Remi) and Bimbo Ademoye (Arolake) both made love. In my opinion, the sex scene was not necessary, considering the movie is meant to teach a vital lesson to both young and old viewers. The display of nudity might have been a way to improve or modernize the Nollywood industry, but it was not necessary.

Several viewers have made some comments about the particular scene. @NiyiOgunkoya tweeted; “@netflix as good as your new movie #Anikulapo is, it is not good for the family weekend, especially with children. Should you always show sexual scenes? I mean, in the full glare of all there were adults having sex! That’s not good enough and should not be aired on our screens.”

@ifiokabasiokop also opined; “#Anikulapo trended yesterday and I wanted to see what it was about so I read the reviews which is what I normally do before I watch a film. Most of the reviews simply said that the sex/nudity scenes in it were completely uncalled for.”

“Now, the same thing happened when #BloodSisters trended. I know people who fell into pornography and masturbation just because they watched that series. About 80% of the conversations about #Anikulapo centre on the nude scenes, which I am sure will affect people who tried to stay away from porn. My question is, why is Nollywood bringing nudity into our films? These are movies that families go to cinemas to watch, movies that teenagers with smartphones will watch and they what they’ll think of afterwards is sex.

“I love Kunle Afolayan and I think he is an amazing filmmaker but the Introduction of nudity in this film is totally uncalled for. He can tell a story without lacing it with nude scenes and it will still pass across the message. Hollywood is full of pornographic content in their films and now, Nollywood is towing the same path. I pray it never Gets to #LGBTQ content, otherwise, Nigeria as we know it, will change drastically as America changed from a Christian nation to one with all sorts of sinful ideologies.

“I haven’t watched the movies I’ve mentioned in this tweet because I’m guarding my heart against sin.”