The Wedding Party (2016): Lessons in Authentic Storytelling from the Bruce Lee of Visuals.
By the time I was done with my first semester at Obafemi Awolowo University, in December 2016, I had ‘watched’ The Wedding Party by osmosis.
It had been one hell of a year and I’d had to fight my way through challenge after daunting challenge. However, there were a couple of good times sprinkled amidst the doom and gloom. I remember like it was yesterday.
1. I got accepted to study Medicine and Surgery and met a lot of awesome people.
2. I started reading and writing poetry and loved every single moment of it.
3. I bought the first book for my personal library.
4. This was also the year I started to think critically about movies and the effect they have on audiences. I got really interested in the craft and business of filmmaking.
The following year, I’d join the editorial board in my department as a movie reviewer and my column would be called The Box Office Times.
By the time The Wedding Party was released on 16th December, the medium of film had completely piqued my interest; movies had become my thing. I remember the week it came out; the obsession spread through campus like wildfire. People could not stop talking about the characters, songs, jokes and scenes that they enjoyed. Back then, I was part of the self-righteous bandwagon spewing ‘can anything good -really, truly, genuinely good- come out of Nigerian Cinema?’ and other myopic statements. Therefore I didn’t think much of the movie at first.
Three things forced me to change my mind:
1. The record-breaking box-office numbers implied that The Wedding Party was really connecting with audiences both at home and abroad.
2. The fact that I had learned almost half of the movie by osmosis. I could recite whole lines of dialogue and was familiar with virtually all the characters despite the fact that I’d never seen the movie.
3. The lightning-speed with which it spread through Obafemi Awolowo University. I hypothesized that the reason it resonated with everyone so much was because the story was authentic, to say the least. I left school for the Christmas holidays with a firm resolve; I had to watch the movie myself to see what the rave was all about.
The Wedding Party wasn’t just any other Nollywood movie. It had crossed the threshold into becoming a cultural and box-office phenomenon. How had a directorial debut managed to do all that? How had it managed to unite audiences like it had?
Short answer: The Wedding Party is a lesson in authentic storytelling.
Long answer:
1. Dialogue: How Do Real People Talk?
The Wedding Party is a romantic-comedy served with a dash of typical Nigerian drama-especially the kind prevalent at (high society) weddings. The entire runtime focuses only on that day of the wedding; nothing more. It begins with Wonu, the wedding planner fussing over the arrangements and closes with her when she’s done for the day and tired as hell. In the opening credits, the cast is presented in alphabetical order. No one actor has top billing over the other because the movie wasn’t made for any one actor. In other romantic-comedies, the movie would probably have begun with a montage of the leads-Dunni and Dozie in this case-meeting at a bar in the late oughts, going to school abroad together, getting in a couple fights, breaking up, making up, meeting the parents and finally, the marriage proposal. But The Wedding Party isn’t interested in showing us the experience through the eyes of only one or two characters. The event itself gets top billing and the point-of-view is freed up so the audience can watch the movie as objectively as possible. In this case, art doesn’t just hold a mirror up to society; it invites the audience to actively participate in the experience. This is where the characters and the way talk become important.
If I didn’t already know that this movie was written by Kemi Adetiba and Tosin Otudeko, I’d have thought that The Wedding Party was simply 95 minutes of solid, fantastic improv. It almost feels like the actors (especially the comedians among them) were given their character descriptions and simply told to go for it. On repeated viewings, I half expected to be watching an alternate version of the movie- one that was shot Cinema Verité, documentary style. That’s how authentic it felt.
One thing I commended Adetiba’s King of Boys for was for the diversity of the characters. Ibo, Hausa, Yoruba spoke and interacted freely in their native tongue, bursting effortlessly into proverbs and wise sayings every now and then. This is also the case in The Wedding Party. It is a story set in Nigeria, made by a Nigerian and made for Nigerians. And it shows. The characters speak English because they’re educated and because that is the nation’s official language and not because they’re trying to enunciate every word in an effort to sound posh at all costs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the correct pronunciation of words or the embellishment of dialogue with one accent or the other especially if it is in the character’s description or typical of the actor. What I am saying is that Nigerian movies should not be afraid to let their characters burst out their native tongue from time to time. For too long, Nigerians have equated being fluent in one’s mother tongue with being uncivilized or uncouth. That has to go. The Wedding Party laughs in the face of such an assumption. The middle class characters like Harrison, the driver and the wealthy ones like Banky W’s Dozie are not afraid to roll out the pidgin. Deidre joins the Efik dancers at the reception. Adunni (Sola Sobowale) and BamBam (Alibaba) and the Ori-Oke of Ekitiland (Saka) all speak Yoruba. Even Wonu drops her posh, refined act and goes on her knees in what is truly one of the most hilarious lines of dialogue in a movie stuffed to overflowing with them: Iya Michael e joo. Mo fi Olohun oba be yin.
Nigerians flocked to the cinema, everyone in school was talking about it and I was able to experience it vicariously because the movie had people that talked, moved and reacted like us up on the big screen; because it was an authentic story.
2. Theme: Love conquers all. Or does it?
Let’s revisit a couple scenes in the movie, shall we?
If you ask me, the prevalent theme in The Wedding Party is expressed vividly in the scene where the thief, Luqman, is holding them all at gunpoint in the room where the gifts are kept. He is frustrated at the state of things in the country. He's young, angry and unemployed and someone has to be responsible. Yes. It has to be the rich people with all their glamorous weddings and owambes and someone has to make them pay.
A lot of viewers can relate to his plight in one way or the other. And while the romantic-comedy/drama sensibilities of a movie like The Wedding Party doesn’t exactly provide the right atmosphere to tackle issues of unemployment, corruption and all the horrors of late-stage capitalism, it deserves some props for bringing it up. It’s the reality (i.e. genuine, true, authentic) that while some families are busy celebrating the union of their children in holy matrimony, right there in Lagos, other families are grappling with hunger, homelessness and despair.
And While Adetiba and Otudeko might not have an immediate answer to these horrors; they’ve created a character to act as a foil for Luqman in the person of Wonu (Zainab Balogun), the wedding planner. While Wonu is busy making moves, screaming back against the madness of Lagos and the unfairness of the system by planning a wedding for high-society families, Luqman is scheming to rob that same wedding. They’re both young; probably got out of school at about the same time. But while Luqman has seven years of lamenting behind him because he cannot immediately afford the luxury of ‘all these Instagram boys’, Wonu is putting her feet down and pushing hard. I’ve heard a few critiques of The Wedding Party where people say that the bride and groom are not given enough screen-time and we barely know anything about them. I agree. And like I said earlier, the movie isn’t about any one character per se but if I really wanted to decide who this movie was about, Wonu and Luqman would be my pick.
At the beginning, the movie alternates between the scene with Wonu making arrangements and an Okada going through the streets carrying the wedding invitations. At the end of this sequence, Luqman picks up an invitation that’s fallen to the floor and scans through it. In filmmaking, when two scenes are cut such that the editing makes it alternate between one and the other, it’s usually a signal that the filmmakers are trying to show association between the two elements of the story. From the very beginning, the juxtaposition of those two scenes tells us one thing: Wonu and Luqman’s stories are connected. In another movie, the scene where he holds them at gunpoint would have seemed out of place. But Kemi Adetiba knows what kind of story she is telling. We began with his story and followed him through the narrative and this is the end of his arc.
Let’s go back to that scene with Luqman. After they’re all inside, Adunni promises Luqman millions of money in exchange for sparing their lives. Bambam immediately comes clean that he has no money and his wife says, 'I married you when you had nothing /Sebi emi ni mo lo maan ya awin eba fun e' which roughly translates to ‘was it not me who used to buy eba on credit for you, in those days?’
That line is the apotheosis (I love this word) of the theme. The message here is that many of these high-society people did not start at the top. Some of the have also had their days of suffering, of despair and of eating eba on credit. But they were able to overcome all that because of love and hard work; because they had each other.
The line that closes the movie is uttered after Wonu smells her wig and goes 'hmph, wig oni wig' and I think the filmmakers’ message here is clear. Adetiba is likely speaking to young people saying:
'I get what you're going through. You're building your business. You’re working on yourself and the road seems really hard. I understand. I've been there. But you have a choice. You can either give in to despair and rob weddings like Luqman or you can work hard at what you love and plan those weddings like Wonu. On somedays you might have to borrow a wig and occasionally an accent but you’ll come out on top in the end. Remember the line 'Sebi emi ni maan lo gba awin eba fun e'? Nobody starts out with all the experience. Oh and it won't hurt to find true love amidst all your hustle too.
Or at least that was the message I got from it.
3. Comedy/Drama: The Dials Go Up To 11.
Everything in The Wedding Party stands out. Every. Little. Thing. Even the minor characters like the Ori-Oke of Ekitiland and the prophet with his 'Holy Ronaldo and Holy Samson Siasia' routine are memorable because this movie is interested in showing society (yes, even high society) as it really is. And because of that, the comedy and drama are put on overdrive. Sola Sobowale is at her Sola Sobowale-iest. Alibaba delivers a genuinely hilarious performance. The real life comedians featured bring their A-game. The costumes are bright and in-your-face. The conflict reaches pressure-cooker levels of insanity. The movie is a colorful feast; a cinematic potluck if you will. There’s something in it for everyone.
One of my favorite lines in the movie comes when they’re going to the reception and the car with Bambam and his wife is rattled by a pothole or something. His wife says, 'careful now. Do you want my panla stew to pour?' to which Bambam replies, 'There’s panla stew in this car?'
If this isn’t authenticity raised to one million, I don’t know what is. The reality that a wealthy oil magnate has a special preference for panla stew is just that — a reality.
I have a lot more to say but I’ll save it for another post. I can’t wait for Kemi Adetiba to release more movies so I can do an auteur theory reading of her work (yes, I love film theory).
I started thinking about ‘authenticity’ as far as Nigerian cinema is concerned after I saw The Delivery Boy directed by Adekunle ‘nodash’ Adejuyigbe. You should check it out if you haven’t. My next article would be on that.
If The Wedding Party taught me anything, it’s this: let authenticity breathe through your work. No one can define what is genuine or authentic for you. But if you write from your truth, from your heart, your work will truly stand out and connect with the people you’re trying to reach. Experimenting and learning about different styles is highly encouraged as long as you stay true to yourself and tell your own stories.
All great artists are thieves but by no means are they pretentious.
This was the message being communicated to me, a young creative, that December in Ile-Ife. I just didn’t know it at the time.
Osamudiamen Joseph
