Inspaya Productions, Shutter Speed Project, present Musa Abdullahi (Mayowa), Femi Adebayo (Leccturer), Lateef Adedimeji (Ade), Kemi Adekomi (Nurse Tope), Kahinde Adepoju (Young Ibrahim), Argborako (herbalist), Bimbo Akintola (Dr. Francis), Esther Ayopo (Ajoke), Debby Felix (Bisayo), Jide Kosoko (Vice Councilor) Christian Oyesiji (Naomi Macaulay), Belinda Rita (Ajoke). Bimbo Oshin, Director, Biodun Stephen: Writer Anthony Eloka Ogbu; Producer, Banji Adesanmi; Director of Photography, Oladapo Abiola, Lawrence Morgan. ©2022
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Says Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), in the acclaimed literary drama of Tennessee Williams. Strangers is a human story worth watching. One that could be stored on the top shelf of your library. Too human, matter of fact. Imagine a character comes to terms with his life, and utters, “I am nothing. I’m nobody. I’m a failure.” The last time I saw a character uttering self-condemnation was in Bursting Out (2010) when Majid Michel delivers the most tear-provoking statement, over the treatment he receives at the hands of Zara’s (Genevieve Nnaji) friends in a restaurant. It makes me want to cry every time I watched the movie. Now this.
Adetola Akinjobi (Lateef Adedimeji) while swimming with his friends in the murky stream, that runs in the village, is bitten by an unknown bug or snake or something, and the spot begins to itch and continue to swell up. His grandfather who assumes the position of the traditional medicine man, and witch doctor of the community could only give Ade potions to drink, rub chalks and cry incantations over Ade’s sour. Poor boy he could cry a whole night and the pain can’t abate. He’s losing weight as couldn’t eat and sleep. Ade’s mother and sister had no other recourse but to cry and cry over Ade as they see him lying there before their eyes wasting away.
The apparition of his dead father appears to Ade one night, and this was no hallucination, but his father and the dead ancestors were beckoning him to join the clan in the underworld. But Ade’s time on this earth was not up and he is saved by a timely visit of a Christian church crusader, Pastor Johnson, who visited the village and walked up to his mother and by chance sees Ade. Upon seeing Ade, and knowing the poor kid was in danger of losing his life, he informed his church in the city to come to see the boy, and Pastor Macauley) and his wife and his handful of congregants visit the village and see the young Ade in misery.
The goodness and mercy of the church, through Pastor Johnson, take Ade to the city, even as Ade’s aunt Abike opposes it. One could see Ade ferried to the riverside in a wheelbarrow and canoed to the city and hospitalized. At the hospital, Mrs. Macauley finds a sponsor to take Ade’s hospital bill. The hospital finds that Ade’s sour has developed gangrene and the disease was eating fast into his leg. Ade gets cured and Mrs. Naomi Macauley (Christian Oyesigie) puts Ade in school despite his age. Rapidly, Ade graduated from secondary school and enrolled in the College of Medicine, then he lost his mother before he could graduate from medical school. When he failed his final medical exam, he relents on pursuing higher education and goes back to the village.
In college, an old secondary schoolmate who he had befriended in college follows him to the village and talks him into coming back to resit his medical exam. This time he passes, to the top of the class, and becomes a class-A doctor. Adetola Akinjobi (Lateef Adedimeji) marries Busoya (Debby Felix), the girl who gives her seat to Ade in primary school then as a college mate-cum girlfriend and later his wife.
Anthony Eloka Ogbu creates a vulnerable but interesting character in Strangers. Adetola Akinjobi has no living father, only a poor mother who couldn’t afford food for Ade and his sister and the dependent grandfather. Ade is in the worst predicament when he takes sick. He, as a boy isn’t religious but his mother, a Christian believer and has Christian crusaders come along from time to time, is lucky to be discovered by the church. Mrs. Macauley and her husband, strangers to Ade and his mother, but through the church, find a helping hand. And like the work of providence, Ade’s life takes a turn for the better.
Ade for character analysis is weak and unreligious. He excels in all classes up to the point he fails the final exam, then he becomes despondent. He sees himself as a failure, and when Bisayo would come to take him back to school and meet him all curled up by the same stream where he contracted the life-consuming disease, his skin chalky white like a homeless man in the open air in early harmattan. He says to her:
“What are you doing here?”
“I have come to find you, Ade.”
“Find me? I am not lost, am I?”
“Ade, you need to come back to school. Look around you. Is this what you want in life?”
“This is what life has given to me. I must return to everything I used to be…Can’t you see for yourself; I have failed in life? I have failed in everything.”
“…Ade, you are not a failure.”
“I have failed to be a medical doctor.”
“You can retake the courses.”
“I can’t! Bisayo you can return to the city. I am nothing I’m a nobody. I’m a failure.”
We sometimes don’t know what we want or the good for us until an angel that cares shows us the light. Remember him promising his grandfather, he’ll go to school and be a medical doctor and come back to cure him. Bisayo reminds him of the fact that no medical doctor ever comes from this village, and he was going to be that person and he’s throwing it away. That interaction between Ade and Bisayo brings Ade to his senses. Again, the hand of a stranger, Bisayo, gives Ade the impetus to go back to school and get his medical degree.
The story of the younger Ade is fascinating but not as interesting as the older Ade in college, fighting to pass his final medical exam. The once unmanageable character in Ayinla (2021); Ajala (Kunle Afolayan) could not buy into his imbroglio but plays Ade here to the letter. I cannot give the limping in the film an A grade. But the demonstration of his wretchedness after his failure and attempt to give up on life, seeing him curled up by the murky stream is totally in form. And the panoramic shot of him in that scene makes him very alone, wretched, and helpless. Mrs. Macauley and her husband start the odyssey of a life journey with Ade, but Bisayo is his saving grace.
Tennessee William’s Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire says, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Who hasn’t? We all have at one time or another. The hand of strangers helps Ade. I have. The kindness of a stranger got me to the United States after fighting and longing, and again fighting and longing, and lost all hope, until a hand of a stranger pulled me over on the eve of a civil war! “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares––Hebrews 13
This movie is award-winning.