If film is a preferred medium for transporting us to places and circumstances we might not otherwise experience, Rungano Nyoni's deeply affecting (to nearly the point of put-off-ish-ness) On Becoming A Guinea Fowl is likely to send audiences to interesting places, both visually and emotionally.
Set in modern day Zambia, Nyoni (who also wrote the script) introduces us to Shula (Susan Chardy) late one night on her drive home from (as we learn later) a costume party. She's donning a bejeweled helmet of sorts, looking quite alien when paired with her black latex puffy suit, a fitting metaphor as we get to know her extended family and how she fits in (or doesn't). She stops in the middle of the quiet, dark road when she notices a body splayed out in the opposite lane; upon further inspection, she realizes it's her Uncle Fred.
From the moment she makes this discovery, nothing in Shula's life is easy (and perhaps it never was, but Nyoni keeps us mostly laser focused on this moment and what follows). Her party-girl cousin, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela) shows up on a similar drive home, very drunk and very unconcerned with their uncle's passing, almost amused by it. They stay by the body overnight, and in the morning, the authorities come to investigate and take it away.
So much of where we follow Shula from here is going to be foreign to (white?) American audiences, and it's not lost on me that part of what might put me off the film ever so slightly is the discomfort I experienced watching Shula's extended family mourn in ways that are their custom but seem quite confusing to my uninitiated eyes. As the women-folk gather at her family home, her rather Western-looking life (she drives a luxury car, for example, which doesn't seem to be the norm) is upended for days on end. Furniture is moved out to make room for the mourners and tents are erected in the large open yards. She tries to find privacy at a hotel room where she takes a business meeting via Zoom, but her aunties come find her and quite literally take her away to participate in the funeral.
There is overdramatic weeping as a sign of grief, walking on knees or crawling in a sign of mourning, and the women are tasked not only with all of the cooking to feed the dozens of people who have gathered, but they are expected to serve the men to their exact preferences as well. It's all a fascinating peek into a world many likely are unaware of, and as uncomfortable as some of it made me knowing how different it is from my own culture, I nevertheless found myself connecting to Shula and even Nsansa and their younger cousin Bupe (Esther Singini) as Nyoni digs deeper into their shared trauma at the hands of Uncle Fred and the response (or lack thereof) from the preceding generation.
Several times throughout the film, Nyoni pauses the proceedings as if to give us time to process what we're hearing and seeing; we may be at a distance from Shula and the other women, but we never feel far from what they're going through or the issues bubbling to the surface about Uncle Fred's death. Coupled with an intense score (by Lucrecia Dalt) that would seem to be more at home in a thriller or horror movie, Nyoni is not being shy about the fact that that story she's telling is a difficult one.
The film's most impactful scene comes towards the end when the families, including Uncle Fred's young widow, Chichi (Norah Mwansa), come together to discuss the situation and settle the estate. The clash between these two sides is as powerful and intense as any blockbuster's epic battle scene, and in the end, it's impossible to know who's in the right. Which is perhaps Nyoni's goal when the credits role; Shula is a stranger in this family in many ways, and yet undeniably connected through blood and experience. By the time the film ends, we, too, feel inescapably intertwined with Shula and this world we might otherwise never have discovered.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is now in theaters.
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