Sins of Rachael
Director Emeka H. Umeasor takes a close and personal look at Sins of Rachael. You can find it so in the composition of the shots as they interpret on screen. The excessive use of extreme close-ups and medium close-ups bring even viewers closer to the events and characters on screen. Beautiful shots befitting beautiful story.
Screenwriter, Andy Nwakalor weaves a beautiful drama here too for our viewing pleasure. He tells the story of Rachael (Joy Torty), a fountainhead character and a straight-faced born-again Christian believer, whose father, Chief Nnaji (Jim Lawson Madweke) for his own political ambitions, wants her to marry Christopher (Akume Akume). Rachael, in turn, is in love with a choir boy Sunday (Mike Ezuruonye), from her church. Yet, in obedience to the word of the Bible, as thus, “obey thy father’, she asks her suitor Christopher if he could find a place in his heart for Christ in exchange for politics.]
Christopher is a born, bred, groomed, nurtured, tutored, carved, and schooled politician (a politician with maniacal disposition, though) finds Rachael’s ultimatum impossible. His father could even skin him alive for joining the church. Both Sunday and Christopher jostle for Rachael’s hand in marriage anyway, until Rachael on her way from church choir practice, is raped by Steve (Emeka Ike, the devil worshipper who brutally murders his mother in the Warriors of Satan) and conceives thereon. The story goes into turbo gear.
The household of Chief Nnaji is in disarray by this incident. Rachael’s pregnancy will sure ruin his politics and therefore wants an abortion, or she and her mother should leave his household. Both Christopher and Sunday go ballistic in their different ways: Christopher couldn’t stand the thought of that THING in Rachael’s stomach. Sunday calls Rachael’s unborn child, ‘bastard’, and doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. Rachael in the middle of this rigmarole is playing it by the will of God, but no abortion. Her Character, except for frequent outburst in cries, is completely flat and anti-radioactive.
The drama takes yet another turn when Rachael runs into her raper, Steve, and confronts him with the truth. Rachael wants confession and acceptance of God for his evils, so she can forgive him. Steve easily accepts Christ alright, but before Rachael could have his child, Christopher murders him. At his bedside, Rachael witnesses Chief Nnaji (her father) accepts Christ. Christopher enters the same scene, a giant-size cross like a burden of sin, hanging on his neck, obviously, a born-again Christian. Sunday repents and marries Rachael after she put to bed her fatherless baby girl.
The biblical Rachael’s sin, if it could be so called, is when she steals her father Leban’s god as she escapes with her husband Jacob, into Israel. But Andy Nwakalor’s Sins of Rachael cries out loud two philosophical thoughts: Good versus evil. Spiritualism versus existentialism. This script is the writer’s unequivocal take on Nollywood’s obsession with both political and financial aggrandizement, in disregard for fear of God as Rachael portrays.
This side of the Atlantic (America) we call Sins of Rachael, a beautiful testament to Rowe versus Wade (pro-life versus Pro-choice). Simply put.
that movie was good but yet sad….