Golden Effect Pictures presents, Tooni Afolayan (Ponmile), Simi Ogunleye (Simi), Ayo Adesanya (Ireti), Ayo Ogunshina (Chairman), Toyosi Benjamin (Otunba). Hamzat Sherifdeen (Kamoru), Femi Adebayo (Mr. Ogidan). Executive /Producer, Kunle Afolayan; Production Manager, Sodiq Adebayo; Line Producer, Segun Akintunde; Director, Kunle Afolayan; Director of Photography, Kunle ‘Nodash Adejuyigbe; Screenplay, Tunde Babilola; Assistant Director, Joseph Duke. ©2019.
In the introduction of my book, Nollywood Film Reviews, that would be coming out shortly, I expressed my discontent for the Nollywood film industry not giving much attention to feature movies for kids and acted by kids, especially for their positive developments. Recently, and in the same week, I watched on Netflix, back to back Mokalik and The Boy Who harnessed the Wind, a BBC documentary.
In one sense, I was enthralled that finally, we are paying attention to movies featuring kids and about kids. Of the two movies, though not in the same narrative realm, The Boy Who Harnessed… has a purpose. I believe that comes from the fact that its genesis is in a real-life story, and an interesting one too. The lead character, William is daring, which is a reminiscence of the audacity of Eze, in Fada Fada (2017). William uses a school library in a school where he is expelled because his parents couldn’t afford school fees, but go on to invent a windmill from scraps to bring water to his father’s arid farmland, thereby helping his father yield a yearlong bumper harvest.
Our greatest attention must be on Mokalik, a film about a twelve years old boy, Ponmile (Tooni Afolayan) from a middle class and well-to-do family, whose father, Mr. Ogidan (Femi Adebayo) brings him one morning to a mechanic shop, hands him over to Chairman (Ayo Ogunshina), to vet for a career as a mechanic for one day. Ponmile is completely disoriented. What of the crowd of workers, old cars, red clay mud, running gutters, and hawkers all creating chaos he has never experienced before? Ponmile couldn’t even bow down in his traditional greetings to Chairman. But being out of the cramped-up high scale world of mom and dad, and with the help of his trainer Kamoru (Hamza Sherifdeen), he’s quick to get out of his shell.
Under Kamoru’s tutelage in the mechanic shop, he is introduced to airplane spotting, which gives him a firsthand knowledge, names of all planes that ply overhead the shop, and their times of flight. That is the first amusing experience for him. Then too, Kamoru takes him to the canteen and he sees a sixteen years old Simi (Simi Ogunleye), who he immediately has a shine to. From time to time, he would sneak into the canteen to have private talks with Simi. She too enjoys his company as well.
As if all like a syllabus or program of study, the Chairman takes Ponmile, to a shop and, introduces him, drops him there to work with the senior in that shop, and later comes and takes him to another. By the end of the day, Ponmile has visited and touched and taught a thing or two from each of the departments ranging from mechanics, to panel beating, painters, welding to rewiring. His one day in the shop and training could have been rudimentary but he does get his feet wet in the trade.
Someone commented that Mokalik is understated. Whatever he’s referring to is on him. I believe he’s referring to the value of the story. I mean the composition, the rhetoric. Since this is the first one-liner in the commentary I’ve seen so far, I don’t. I don’t think it’s understated, or any critic can understate, or underestimate this project. At first, it may seem that the shop in Mokalik or the story itself lacks substance. But no. It may not have the hallowed walls of the great Ibadan University with faculties and professors running down corridors in gowns-Chairman has gowns too-this is a training institution with all due respect. And the one thing I observe here is the sense of organization. The shop is divided into faculties, and departments with departmental heads referred to here as seniors.
At the height of the story we witness the graduation ceremony, as humble as it could be but a beautiful traditional ceremony of letting these young apprentices go into the world, after all the wrestling in the dust over spanner number twelve, and girlfriends they couldn’t even have, with all blessings and prayers for success in life. To lend integrity to the institution, the shop offers a certificate of graduation, no matter how crumpled the certificate could be. The certificate award ceremony demonstrates that there’s dignity in labor. This could be a lesson for Ponmile as he sits in the crowd.
There are certain elements of this story I would have preferred to bring to the fore. The cause: Mr. Ogidan complains that he can’t get Ponmile to do anything around the house and therefore brings him to the shop to become an apprentice. Well, in storytelling we needed seeing scenes in exposition, Ponmile’s reluctance to take instructions from home. It would have been in reflections, and contrast to his behavior in the mechanic shop. Here at the end of the day, when he comes to take him home, Ponmile proves his father wrong by saying he wants both school and mechanic apprenticeship.