A Black Ivory Communications Productions Present Doctor Michael Durant (Isiah Washington, Vivica Fox (Chloe Durant), Jimmy Jean-Louis (Doctor Bello), Genevieve Nnaji (Doctor Eniola), Stephanie Okereke-Linus (Bola Ayodeji), Bern Cohen (Doctor Bernstein), Ebbe Bassey-Manzuk (Nurse Helen Obi), Andrea Leigh (Doctor Diane), Tony Abulu (Doctor Lambo), Kemi (Angel Okonoko), Chief Oluduwa (Olumide Bakare). Written/Directed/Produced by Tony Abulu; Co-produced by Isiah Washington, Tunde Macalabi; Associate Producer, Caroline Okolo, Sumonu Bello-Osagie; Director of Photography, Scott St. John. (c) 2012
I waited too long for Doctor Bello to reach my neighborhood on Netflix, and now that it is here, let me take a bite at it. I could not be gladder. Doctor Bello reeks: reek might not be appropriate for such an illustrious creative endeavor. This is a classic tale by every standard. It sure resembles Lorenzo’s Oil (1992), another one of those stories about a boy child afflicted by an incurable or deplorable disease that leaves parents baffled. In Lorenzo’s Oil, the parents (Odunes), Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon, went on independent research to find a cure for adrenoleukodystrophy. I can hardly pronounce the affliction by its medical term, so we must accept the acronym, ALD. After knocking on all doors, the Odunes stumble upon a miracle oil, olive oil sort of, that cures their son of the disease.
The picturesque New York’s Big Apple landscape adds more value to Tony Abulu’s ambitious star-studded Nollywood production. Still, it differs from the left of Lorenzo’s Oil by a hundred and eighty degrees. Lorenzo’s oil’s mystery cure was traditional. Simple. Olive Oil. Doctor Bello’s mystery cure is handsomely spiritual.
Doctor Michael Durant’s (Isiah Washington) patient, Sam Stein (Evan Brinkman), is gradually deteriorating. The hospital is about to give up on Sam. Durant’s greatest fear is this case mustn’t be a repetition of the past. Three years ago, he lost his daughter, Aimee Durant (Sarah Williams), to cancer, and he and his wife had never been the same. Just as the loss has been stressful for him, so is his wife. In fact, Mrs. Durant (Vivica Fox) has taken to heavy drinking. “You sat there and let my baby die—you and your Ivey League education. You cannot even save her. So, f**k you!” she cried out in a drunken spell.
The Patient was sent to his demanding parents to spend his birthday. They immediately call an ambulance to take him back to the hospital, as he relapses. Helen Obi (Ebbe Bassey-Manzuk), who works as a nurse under Doctor Durant, privately informs him about an African Doctor in her neighborhood. She thinks Doctor Durant can consult him on the boy’s case. It is difficult to sway him to the idea, but Doctor Durant is at his wit’s end and will not accept defeat this time. He wants to save the boy, so he gives in.
Doctor Durant meets Doctor Bello (Jimmy Jean- Louis). With a condescending look of disrespect on his face for Bello, he, however, accepts him to visit the sick cancer patient in his wardroom at the hospital. In the hospital wardroom, Doctor Bello touches Sam’s forehead and gives him a clear liquid in a vial, from the point of view of Doctor Diane (Andrea Leigh). Miraculously, cancer affliction goes into remission, and the boy is discharged from the hospital, gone back to attend regular school. The hospital administration wants to be in on the miracle cure and wants to know about the mysterious man Doctor Durant brought to the boy’s room and administered him the liquid from a vial.
Hospital administration suspends Doctor Durant for breaking medical protocol. Doctor Bello was detained at New York’s Rikers prison, unknown to Doctor Durant. When he got to know of the imprisonment of Doctor Bello, Doctor Durant asks the help of the lawyer parents of Sam Stein, and they help with his release. By then, Doctor Bello had been afflicted with the same cancer disease, and his condition worsens by the day. According to Doctor Bello’s brother, with whom he stays in New York, he does not know where his brother left the medicine, with which he cures the boy. Asked where to turn for help, he points to Nigeria.
Doctor Durant jumps on a plane to Nigeria, searching for the miracle cure, hardly knowing where to start. In Nigeria, he is introduced to a series of leads that most turn out to be barriers and hurdles, but will eventually lead him to the source of Doctor Bello’s miracle powers. The sacred mountains of Oki Idanre, the Garden of Life forbidden to men, and holds the secret to life is in Abeokuta.
Doctor Durant determines to reach the source of the mysterious liquid that saved Sam’s life and will also bring that same cure for Doctor Bello. In Nigeria, and on his quest, he is introduced to Bola Ayodeji (Stephnie Okereke-Linus). She will take Doctor Durant to Bose Abe, Doctor Bello’s intended wife, and yet had a girl, Kemi (Angel Okonoko), with her. Bose Abe (Princess Tina Amuziam), points a finger in the direction of the University of Lagos medical head department chair. He, too, points the finger at a quack doctor, Lambo in Abeokuta.
In Abeokuta, we meet, or Doctor Durant meets Doctor Lambo (Tony Abulu). Yes, he is as quacky as they come. He’s in the company of Doctor Eniola (Genevieve Nnaji). Doctor Lambo deals more in herbs and spirits than conventional medicine. Just one look at Doctor Durant, he pronounces, holding on to a fig, “My friends here tell me they recognize you…they already like you. The forest loves you.” So, when Doctor Durant explains his quest to him, he assured the young Doctor Durant that the answer to his investigation rests with God, Oludumare, the Almighty, in the sacred mountain. Since Doctor Eniola has been placed in charge of Doctor Durant, both trek to Abeokuta and meets her uncle, Chief Idowu (Olumide Bakare) the guard to the holy mountain.
The uncle warns Doctor Durant that the quest to the sacred mountain of Idanre is a life journey. “You have to be prepared, body, mind, and soul.” Doesn’t this mission become quixotic from this point on? Like one on a romantic trip? Chivalry, sort of. On the night of his arrival, Doctor Durant is prepared for spiritual readiness to meet with the underworld’s devils, spirits, and angels. And his survival, crucial as it would be, will determine his quest to be accepted in the court of the underworld. The honesty of Doctor Durant in his mission and his bravery got him to survive the incantations and most fearsome test that no man survived, and most men have failed. Some have died. Some have become mad, some, mysteriously, have disappeared. Though the Garden of Life is forbidden to men, “only one’s soul determines his experience,” Chief Idowu asserts.
“My son, go forth, your destiny awaits you in the garden of life,” Chief Idowu’s goodbye word to Doctor Durant before his climb. Doctor Durant scrapes up the sacred mountain of Oki Idanre and reaches the Garden of Light. Here, he is welcomed by Doctor Bello, who had already died in New York and now in the spirit world. And he is in the company of Aimee, the deceased daughter of Doctor Durant. And Doctor Durant hugs his daughter but the spirits couldn’t let her stay with him. What a pleasant reunion for Doctor Durant. As he comes down from the mountain into the physical world, his face and demeanor, like one who has seen Thou face, walks in trance, renounces his citizenship to America. “This is home now,” hauls Eniola to him and kisses her. “this is my new family now” He announces. The trees in the scene take a breather as the wind blows through them.
Doctor Bello is a tale of two levels. Level one is literary, and the other is figurative. When we peel off the academic meaning (level one), the underlying symbolic meaning of the story is the quest to the sacred mountain of Idanre, the Garden of Life. “You have to be prepared, body, mind, and soul.” Until Doctor Durant reaches Lagos, Nigeria, the trip and the quest look simply: find an immediate cure for Doctor Bello. The search turns into the hunt for a Holy Grail (oil for cancer cure) by and by. But better yet, the hurdles and barriers to getting to the source of the cancer cure are reminiscences of Hercules’ trials.
Doctor Bello would be Tony Abulu’s finest. His masterpiece. A world-acclaimed project. If I could help it, Tony tells a tale of a mystic adventure like the Knight Templars of the Holy Grail. Doctor Bello had met Sam the first time in the park. And both the boy and Doctor Bello are magnetized, looking at each other. Doctor Bello touches the boy’s head at the displeasure of his nurse. For the sake of love, Doctor Bello spiritually redeems the boy from cancer while he inherits the disease. Jimmy Jean-Louis plays a similar part to the celebrity professor, with an ugly past in Citation (2020). He had a boy he left behind. As Doctor Bello, he plays a character with a mysterious past and a girl called Kemi, in his past. In Citation. he is fired and deported. In Doctor Bello, he swaps places with Doctor Durant; he is buried in America, and the deracinated Durant will be buried in Nigeria.
And who is this, Tony Abulu? How did he get into film art? His project could be classed as one of the most impeccable Nollywood films produced in the Big Apple, New York. He is a literary genius who tricks us by literary deception into accepting Doctor Durant as a legendary hero on a quest for the mythical Nollywood Holy Grail in the Yoruba mountain. He has produced notable projects in the performing art field. One commentator did not give him good credit on the Crazy Like a Fox (2013). “The story is a mess, dialogue is ridiculous at best, and the direction is poor.” Crazy Like a Fox is his learning tree, your. Wait until you see Doctor Bello, his classic, my friend.
“I’m only doing my job,” Doctor Eniola whines about the accusation of falling in love with Doctor Durant. She isn’t shy, though, to take a loving kiss from him in the end. This movie is a feel-good bite.
Note: You may not believe this. An African American friend of mine made his first trip to Ghana. When he got off the plane, at the airport, he went down straight on his knees and kisses the soil. He says, the tropical sun that has been so punishingly burning turned into cool air, the sun went down and immediately rain showers over him. And he yelled to the God of his ancestors, “I have arrived!”
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