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The Criterion Channel Presents: The Burial of Kojo (2018)

In their trips in a boat out on the lake, Esi’s father would tell her stories that only made sense if you knew the ending. In The Burial of Kojo, Esi tells us a story that we already know the ending to, by virtue of its title -a way of keeping her father’s spirit alive even through the structure of how she presents his narrative. It’s a perfectly poetic choice in a very poetic movie.
The Burial of Kojo was the feature debut of Ghanaian director Blitz Bazawule, before he became a creative partner to Beyoncé, directing her visual album Black is King -a companion to her Lion King soundtrack, and subsequently the movie musical version of The Color Purple. Those almost certainly wouldn’t have come without this film though, a much more interesting movie (at least compared to The Color Purple) that infuses a sense of grand spiritualism and magical realism into a story of some grit and grounded circumstances. A beautifully haunting and enigmatic parable of a movie.
It gets a lot of traction off of its setting -an immaculate clear lake on the shores of which is perched a small village, Nzulezo in western Ghana. It is where Kojo (Joseph Otsiman) settled his family after leaving the city due to some trauma. His story is seen often from the perspective of his young daughter Esi (Cynthia Dankwa), narrated as memory and dream by her future self (voiced by Ama K. Abebrese), consisting of the arrival of a couple unusual strangers, the second of whom is Kojo’s estranged brother Kwabena (Kobina Amissah-Sam), who threatens to disrupt the family by luring Kojo back to the city and his unsavory roots.
The context in which Esi describes her parents is equivalent to ancient deities or heroes of classical stories, mythologizing them even as she tells of the mundaneness in their activities -reminiscing in an intense tone and with vivid descriptions and a sense of weight that strikes the tenor of recounting an old legend. It is not merely a stylistic choice, these grandiose connotations give the storytelling a sense of breadth and validation, connecting the modern to the ancient in how it intersects with themes of spirits and the supernatural world. That first stranger is an old man who gives Esi a white bird that must be protected from a crow hunting it, claiming himself to come from a “realm in-between”. It is something dismissed in the moment but gains meaning as the movie goes along and the metaphor catches up to Esi. Her world seems to be full of them -a telenovela the family watches depicting two brothers driven into conflict over their love of the same woman, something that mirrors the history of Kojo and Kwabena, and a history that had a very tragic end for the woman in question.
There is some tension from this that Bazawule lingers on -when away from Esi the focus is on Kojo and the eeriness of his relationship with his brother, especially as Kwabena tries to get him involved in a gold mining scheme with their childhood friend, which is where the plot appears to direct. A touch of social commentary colours the context of their actions here, the takeover of a lot of Ghanaian companies and institutions by Chinese interests -which feels politically latched to something specific; though apart from that the movie could take place at any time. The atmosphere around this enterprise and even the general chemistry of the brothers, where Kwabena is enthusiastic and outgoing while Kojo is very insular, shrinking in his brother’s presence, is very effective. As is the hauntingly precarious score by Bazawule himself, building to an inevitable fate for Kojo that even then you don’t entirely expect how it will take shape and how Bazawule will illustrate its aftermath.
Because how he illustrates the movie is so compelling, capturing a dreamlike flow in the interspersing of narrative with some evocative flashes of spiritual influence on the characters and their world or the visual representation of a mood or memory -perhaps just as our narrator Esi imagines it. The deep blue of the canopy under which the family makes food and does chores, the image of Esi at a wedding centred and lit by the white of flares, and most strikingly a smoking blue car on a beach with Kojo just outside. Isolated cars in an unusual state against nature always make for captivating images -look at the similar iconic shot from Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout. And this one here likewise sticks in your mind. But Bazawule didn’t just set vivid compositions, he shot his scenes with a dynamic sense of artistry, such as in both visitors approaching the village or the image of the clear reflecting water only pierced by Kojo’s boat out on it.
Bazawule side-steps the idea of a conventional catharsis here, the story a mixture of reflection, imagination, and reconciliation on Esi’s part with what happened -at least in the material plane. Her work is greater outside of that, there is an essence to her father that must be accounted for and which is ultimately resolved. It is a beautiful tragedy. And a sterling film that amidst everything else feels distinctly Ghanaian. Bazawule is an incredibly gifted director and storyteller. I hope his work meaningfully captures that again.

Criterion Recommendation: The Station Agent (2003)
Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent is a movie about lonely people hanging out. It is one of the best movies about lonely people hanging out. One of those buried treasure Sundance movies of the 2000s, it was McCarthy’s directing debut and still may be my favourite movie of his. It centres on Fin, played by Peter Dinklage in his first leading role, an introverted man with a love of trains living next to an abandoned station in rural New Jersey whose solitude is disrupted by a snack truck operator Joe played by Bobby Cannavale and a separated artist Olivia played by Patricia Clarkson. Though Fin rejects socialization, the three grow over the course of the film into a charming found family. The movie’s drama is subdued but not insignificant -the effects of a personal trauma on Olivia and unwanted attention towards Fin bubble throughout, but the movie isn’t about these things as much as the unlikely connections that are formed -it was one of Dinklage’s first roles in which dwarfism was not a defining feature of his character. There’s a comfort to the movie and its various comedic and dramatic avenues, and a laid-back film about unique interests and personalities held by unique people. An underrated movie that deserves a Criterion spotlight.

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