The Audrey Silver Company presents, Rita Dominic (Clara), Jide Kosoko (Md), Femi Jacobs (Makinde), Lida Ejiofor (Ejura), Kate Henshaw (Mrs. Ikomi), Nse Ekpe Etim (Bolarinwa), Colin Richards (Jolomi). Producer/Director, Mildred Okwo; Producer, Rita Dominic; Cinematography, Jim Bishop; Screenplay, Tunde Babilola. (C) 2012
“…totally Nigerian or African story…,” says Mildred Okwo, the Producer/Director of The Meeting, in a post-production interview. She’s right on the dollar, Mildred is right on the money. Did you bring your lunch pack? Did you bring extra Naira or two, if not you’re in deep s***? One need not have the misfortune of being in a waiting room of a director’s or minister’s office in a third world. Most of the places are so congested, they hold more than their share of visitors, and most do not even have a fitting waiting chair and a rest-room. What about the noise, what about the stench wafted in the air by the fellow sitting right next to you? And let me don’t mention the sound and the bottled-up rage that would sooner or later flare and sometimes break into a fight. Yes, right outside the door of whoever, whatever, in the room a few yards from where you sit, expectantly patient to hear your name announced.
You may not believe this, but I’ve been in such an office before. Having made my appointment with the Director from abroad, I got into the reception room like a high-stepper, bulldozed my way to see him. Not only did I offend the receptionist and barred my way, which we, of course, settled over dinner in my second month of waiting, but the entire room went into an uproar over my behavior. Some have spent weeks waiting to see the same Director and were by then frustrated. I spent three months on a waiting list. On one Friday afternoon, the receptionist announces the postponement of all appointments until the director returned. Returned from where? He had left the country while we waited outside his door. I hurried out of that country before my visa expired.
The waiting-room scene which takes two-thirds of the movie resembles the jury-room in the film, 12 Angry Men (1957). On the hottest day of Summer, a 12 man jury is ushered into a room to decide the fate of a young man who they accuse of killing his father. The Jurors thought this would take but a minute, since most people in the courtroom as well as among the Jurors assumed him guilty. The Jurors took a vote, and eleven found the man guilty, except one, Henry Fonda. To achieve a unanimous vote of twelve took the Jurors whole long hours in sweltering heat. What of the idiosyncrasies of the individual jurors that soon crept out of them? The Juror who was claustrophobic. The Juror who missed the Cleveland game and was angry. Or, the Juror who has a son of the same characteristic as the spoilt brat now on trial and the one, who hailed from the slum and had as well experienced hard knocks in the ghetto. The older Juror who keeps vigorously coughing as the smoke inhalation got to him. After series of votes, the Jury overturned the election and unanimously found the man, not guilty.
I have to go into this digression because what is happening in the reception room in The Meeting has a similar scenario with the 12 Angry Men. The Meeting sequesters men and women in a no air-conditioned room, not spacious enough to accommodate, say five, but twice as many people, and all on a different mission to see and seek favor with the Minister of Land. There is Makinde (Femi Jacobs) who, based on a 9:30 am appointment, is here to make a presentation to the minister for a contract, on which the life of his company depends; Mrs. Ikomi (Kate Henshaw) is there too; the uppity type who has a private jet to her name, and feigns waiting, mingling with the ordinary folks. A wealthy woman who hates to remain sitting and waiting in a sweltering outer office of a minister with the ever-growing traffic of people, some who smell not too subtle for Mrs. Ikomi’s snobby nose, hence, pointedly in the air.
Almost everybody in the room hates Mrs. Kachwukwo (Chica Chukwo) who’s in everybody’s business and makes annoying sound with the straw. Mrs. Kachukwo, among the members in the reception room, lends annoying but comic flair to the gathering. She’s proud to tell everyone in the place that as she speaks, her Pastor is praying and pumping the holy ghost fire into the minister so that he can see her today. Then sits Professor Akpan Udofia (Basorge Taria Jr.), the assumed literati, like any professor, with a chip on his shoulder, considering a high ethical place in the society, who, when he coughs, without covering his mouth, vibrates the room like an earthquake. He too is waiting to see the minister as he sits outside his door in the company of a feisty receptionist, Clara (Rita Dominic).
To get passed Clara is the toughest huddle in the business of seeing the minister. To cool tempers from flaring out of control in the waiting room, Clara clears her throat and roars out like a wicked medieval queen announcing an edict, “Excuse me everybody, am selling recharge cards!” Clara, the receptionist, could be so annoying and cursive of the people in the waiting room that she seems a mayoress of a city all to herself. She’s enjoying every bit of her office. She takes bribes from visitors who won’t wait to see the minister and sells snacks and recharge cards to visitors in the room.
Makinde arrives at 8:45 at Abuja airport, from Lagos, to make a presentation to the Minister of Lands, at 9:30 am, but the receptionist moves his appointment to 4 ‘0’ clock in the afternoon. After a long and grueling wait, Clara announces the minster is out of the building, and Makinde should come the next day. Next day comes, other names are called in to see minister but not Makinde. No attention to Makinde and he’s getting pissed off by the day. He doesn’t want to miss his daughter’s graduation which falls on Friday afternoon, and his Managing Director (Jide Kosoko) back in Lagos is harassing and warning him not to screw the presentation. Mrs.Kachukwo, (about a Hausa Man just called in to see the minister), “The kola nut he has eaten for two weeks is enough to give someone a headache.”
Hausa woman, also waiting, offended, “Get out of here.”
Mrs. Kachukwo, “Look at this…am I talking to you?”
Hausa woman, “Igbos, yam eaters.”
“Who are you calling, yam eater? Go sit down, you beggar.”
Already ethnic conflict is brewing between the Hausa and Igbo in the waiting room. The centerpiece of The Meeting is in two scenes. 1)The scene when the tempers of the clients in the reception room flare to a boiling point and finally explode this Friday afternoon, knowing that they have not the chance of seeing the minister for the week. They consult with each other, and together they restrain Clara from stopping Makinde who barges into the minister’s office, even as she howls, “Code red, code red!”
2)The meeting itself takes place at the carpool outside the minister’s office. When Makinde blocks the minister’s jeep from leaving, and an altercation ensues at the scene. The security restrains Makinde even as he’s out of breath. He has to see and tell the minister his mission eventually: “A minister was appointed to serve this nation…You were elected to serve this nation. You were in the private sector before appointed as minister; you know how it works. What happened to you people? I don’t care what’s important anymore. What’s important is my daughter’s graduation today, and I will not miss that ceremony.”
I already envy this Makinde fellow. How come he always gets the best of girls in the movies. On seeing him wake up in bed in the Most Wanted Woman with Nse Ikpe Etim, I almost turned the tv set off, and here now in The Meeting, with the tender and juicy Ejura (Linda Ejiofor) makes me the more envious and jealous. I laughed and crowed like Judas as he sustains a broken lip when the big galoot boyfriend of Ejura, Jolomi (Colin Richards) punched him in his mouth, at the nightclub. Poor man, he can’t help himself, Ejura is the only friend in the remote Abuja terrain who helps him vent out the pent-up rage, to regain his sanity. In the scenes with Clara, outside the minister’s door, in the reception room, and to the moment he barges into the office, plus the views in the hotel room and at the nightclub, dancing with Ejura are all scenes, Femi Jacobs reminds me of Jack Lemmon in the Odd Couples (1968).
It is agreed, The Meeting screenplay calls for Clara’s character to be a little older, and knowing Nollywood production capability and budget, which is not entirely to par yet, the production would have saved itself the embarrassment not to make Clara’s face up. All Clara needed being was to give her some awkward looking afro hairdo, heap her neck up with ’70s beads and necklaces, hang on her ear overblown rings. Smear her lips with a lipstick and eyelashes that would make her look like in constant surprise. Oh, before I forgot, all ten of her fingers must have had rings on it. And donned all with a wardrobe straight from Fela Kuti’s backup girls. There, you have your Clara! But the facial makeup, which takes this shoe-string production three hours every time before a shoot, didn’t serve the purpose. In most of the scenes, Clara’s face shows artificial wrinkles like the face of William Shatner (Captain Kirk) in Star Trek V: Final Frontier, as the heat causes the clay to fall off. It didn’t only look shameful but disgusting like hell.
It doesn’t mean The Meeting didn’t achieve its goal and therefore doesn’t deserve praise. The screenplay is tight and got me laughing out loud. Every story has its genesis from somewhere, though. The idea of packing a small room with people of different traits for a very long time must have a psychological toll of either anger or temperaments that would have an adverse effect. So we see in the 12 Angry Men, and so we have here among the people gathered outside the minister’s door. The screenplay manages them well to the point of kidnapping Clara and to where Makinde waylays the minister’s jeep. Finally, Makinde makes his presentation in the jeep en route to the Presidential Villa and gets his contract signed.
Nice story. Makinde comes back to Abuja, meets Ejura at the top of the unfinished building (business) and they kiss. You bet he must be in some hotel room, snuggled up to that young mutton, Ejura, and whistling: ” There’re whole lots of places I’ve got to go/there’s no telling the things I won’t do…I am gonna hold my head, up so high/Bump around/Enjoy the ride/Nothing gonna hold me down…”