“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” Review
Director: Rungano Nyoni Screenwriter: Rungano Nyoni Cast: Susan Chardy, Elizabeth Chisela, Henry B.J. Phiri Distributor: A24 Running Time: 95 min. MPAA: PG-13
There’s a quiet absurdity to how death and trauma are treated in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. As the film begins, Uncle Fred is dead. He doesn’t die surrounded by his family in a hospital bed or from an unfortunate murder. He collapses dead in the street outside a brothel, discovered by his niece Shula (Susan Chardy), dressed in a Missy Elliot costume from a party. There’s a numbness felt for both the discovery and the funeral to follow, where even the dark discoveries of Uncle Fred are met with muted revision.
As Shula attends the funeral ceremony, she remembers why she has chosen to distance herself from them. The ceremony brings little more than scrutiny from the women who bicker over everything from bathing to meal preparation, where men must be appeased above all else. With quiet glares, she goes through the motions. More liquored up to go through the many hoops is her cousin, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), choosing to get drunk and laugh as her way of coping with the hideous nature of her patriarchal family. But the booze also brings out the honesty, where Nsansa is numbed enough to laugh as she admits to being raped by Fred. She’s not the only one.
There’s some darkness unearthed in the film, but part of the absurdity comes from how Shula finds ways to retreat internally. Dismayed with the present, Shula recalls her childhood, unable to shake the hazy memories of a TV show that taught her about animals. The animal foremost on her mind is the guinea fowl, highlighted for its usefulness in squawking to warn of predators. The more she learns about the funeral traditions, the more she desires to be a guinea fowl. The problem is not whether or not she’ll squawk; the issue is whether or not anybody will listen. One person who won’t is Shula’s father (Henry B.J. Phiri), so thoroughly checked out and hurting for money that he can barely view the pain lurking under his daughter’s stone facade.
Catharsis coats much of this odd film, where Shula’s dryness feels like the most comical and understandable of reactions to women who would gladly look the other way when one of them is being raped. Every scrubbed detail and clouded-out thought of trauma grows so infuriatingly absurd that Shula makes a natural progression to Nsansa’s liquor and desire to act more animal than human. Adding to the absurdity is the inevitable explosion of family feuding, where even literal begging for forgiveness still results in bitterness for men and women who will never be appeased. It is a family that protects predators for little more than family preservation, due to crumble if not by a squawk than for the audacity of finger pointing and money grubbing.
Director Rungano Nyoni has composed a refreshingly relatable, bleak, and surreal approach to the existential terror of family scandals. Despite how dark this material can get, there’s some surprising moments of connection, as when all the women corner Shula to stress that they’re aware of the abuse, but unable to scream their dismay, drowning their sorrows in songs that cover up the true pain that can never be unearthed in front of discriminating and freeloading patriarchs. It’s hideous, but also so towering and exhausting that there’s little more than sighs amid the shameful discoveries of Paul and the unwillingness to approach these issues. Sometimes life doesn’t deal you dignity. Sometimes it deals you a death in the road and a Missy Elliot costume, and you just have to laugh, scream, or squawk to feel anything.
