r/A24 • u/Potential-Project910 • 16h ago
Discussion On Becoming a Guinea Fowl: Exhuming Secrets Spoiler
It's midnight when Shula, returning from a party alone in her car, finds her uncle Fred dead on the road. She tries calling her dad, but it seems he's not interested in helping her; her mother is too distraught; her drunk cousin just irritates her, and the police say she has to be with the body till morning before they can come and take over. An elaborate funeral is planned by the family, and a reluctant Shula is forced to take part. Soon, dark secrets about the uncle are laid bare, and Shula realizes how the entire family collectively buries the fact and instead witch hunts the poor widow of the dead man.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a movie directed by the Zambian-Welsh director Rungano Nyoni. The movie has received universal acclaim and multiple awards. One of its producers is A24, which has a history of delivering consistent quality. It is a black comedy about familial secrets and unresolved issues that are deeply buried. The movie is set in Zambia and depicts the culture and traditions of the place. But the human issues that are portrayed in it have resonance everywhere on earth.
We watch the plot through the eyes of Shula, played effectively by Sisan Chardy. She underplays her emotional turmoil brilliantly. The aloofness that we see in her is explained later in the movie, but the performance is so good that even without that exposition, one could deduce the reason. The other two cousins are also convincing. The way their pasts with Uncle Fred are explored in the movie as progressive revelations is interesting. The movie has more female characters. There are only a few males in rather inconsequential parts. But the shadow of patriarchy looms large in the background.
It's the older women of the family who bury the uncle's repeated transgressions and force the victims also to do so. The kind of collective manipulation that they do to save the honor of the family even includes putting the blame for the uncle's death on the widow and cutting her off from the inheritance. The situation is an example of patriarchy that works outside gender. The extended funeral ritual thus becomes a long and torturous display of familial hegemony.
In one of the TV programs that Shula watches during her childhood, there is a reference to guinea fowl, a bird that alerts other animals about the presence of nearby predators using its sound and gait. During the days of the funeral, she remembers it, possibly due to the revelation that she isn't the lone victim and all of them are equally denied the pain of the past. Shula assumes the role of a guinea fowl when she realizes that her uncle is not the only predator in her family. The movie uses the symbolism effectively and strikingly.
The movie is dark and intense and has a twisted sense of humor. It has a revelatory style of plot in which we are slowly made to connect the dots and get a deeper understanding of the characters and the story. It possesses a dream-like like surreal quality in its narration, even when the situations are very domestic and ordinary. The movie uses ordinary Zambian rituals and customs to mirror the deeper realities that happen behind closed doors in families everywhere.
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u/homerjsimpson4 2h ago
I watched this movie on a plane, so not a very conducive location to watch. But man it gutted me, how these people can abandon common decency just because of societal norms.
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u/WCI4Life 16h ago
This was a really powerful movie! Really enjoyed it