C2002
Ulzee Nigeria Ltd Production present, Ramsey Nouah (Danny) ,Omotala Ekenhinde (Mary). Screenplay/Director, Charles Novia. (2003)
Production Conference: Presents are: Screenwriter/Director Charles Novia), and producer
Producer: Who do you think of in the male lead of “When Love Dies?”
Screenwriter/Director: (In unison) A method Actor.
Producer: Why a method actor, and in fact what is method acting?
Screenwriter: I wrote a story that is too personal. Method Acting is the acting wherein the actor, in a vivid sensation on the stage or in front of the camera brings back fresh pain that has plagued him his whole life. According to Strasberg, actors should use their own personal experiences both emotional and cognitive to the character they play.
Director chuckles his approval: Wow!
Producer: Then who’ll that be?
Director/Screenwriter: (In unison) Ramsey Nuah!
When Love Dies, is a ninety-minute, a romantic story involving a Liberian refugee, Mary (Omotala Jalade Ekehinde) in Northern Nigeria, whisked from there to be a house-maid to a military colonel, but soon the colonel tries one afternoon to rape her unsuccessfully. The colonel’s wife threw her out onto the street. The colonel, however, followed her and offered to take her to Lagos, provided she could be his mistress. Her Liberian pride would not let her but…
Hardship breaks Mary’s wing when she calls the colonel to come get her from jail one day, and put her in a mansion and makes available to her everything, except real love which she never had for the colonel. During one night on the town, in a speak-easy, she’s enthralled in a Karaoke bar, by the young singer, Danny (Ramsey Nuoah), a struggling artist, and falls in love with him and not long, brings him home and lodges him in a pad at the boys’ quarter.
Another girlfriend long on the waiting list to get an apartment from colonel (he has apartments all over town for girls) comes crying when she’s ejected from her room. The colonel provides her emergency assistance room in the same quarter as Danny. It turns out she’s Danny’s old girlfriend-that is what he thinks but the woman does not think so-and now that they’re so close together they could easily rekindle the relationship. She thinks. The story gets a little soapy here. Since Danny could not turn his attention to her, she goes telling the colonel about Danny and Mary.
The colonel and his thugs beat Danny to a pulp, and goes home, backhanding Mary that ended her in the hospital with a terminal illness. Mary begs the colonel for Danny’s release, which he does but Danny should come and take his things out of the pad. Danny’s mother hears the news from the village, and comes in town and traces Danny to the colonel’s house, and it turns out the colonel, “Bala!” as Danny’s mother would call him is Danny’s dead-beat father. More soapy here too! Bala had come from India, a young soldier while she was a mere sweet sixteen, and had impregnated her and denied the pregnancy. She went to the village and Bala disappeared into thin air.
In a tear-jerking scene, Danny goes into a tirade: “How many of your kind out there, how many…How many of you have abandoned countless children…how many?…how many children of rape…children of lies…no you don’t know how I feel…you abandoned my mother, look at her…you abandoned me too and you’re standing there talking about forgiveness….!”
In a not too recent interview, Ramsey Nuah said the following: “My father is an Isreali…my dad has never been around…I did not even get to know him…I mean father was never around during my growing up days and I did not get to know him…up till now, I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive…I grew up on the streets of Ebu Meta, then Surulere….”
In the scene where Colonel Bala meets Danny in a moment of truth, you’ll notice that Ramsey Nuah is not talking to Bala, but to his deadbeat Isreali father in real life. You’ll see the anger on his face, resentfulness in his eyes, and the fume of hatred coming from his ears. The acting in that scene is complete method acting. Method acting is a process when actors draw upon the most painful experiences of their lives and use it in the present. Get It?
What’s in a name? The title of When Love Dies is ironic. I see no love between Mary and Colonel to breed or nurture, and to bloom before it withered in the harsh Lagos terrain. Mary becomes animus against Colonel from the time he near-raped her and denied her the good fortune that was on her way. By accepting his invitation to be his mistress and showing her teeth in form of laughter did not prove love and on too many occasions Mary says to his face that she does not love him. The love that dies in the film is the drowning of Mary, who represents real love for Danny.