Kalsoume Sinare Tv presents Kalsoume Sinare (Yaayo), Jackie Appiah (Nena Yaa), Martha Ankomah (Narkie), Kingsley Yamoah (Apulewey), Umar Krupp (Mensah), Anderson Frimpong (Ganyo), Samuel Bravo (Ayaa). Story Idea, Kalsoume Sinare; Screenplay, Devine Jones; Associate Producer, Umar Krupp; Producer, Kalsoume Sinare; Executive Producer, Kalsoume Sinare TV; Director, Devine Jones; Director of Photography, Tunde Adekoya. © 2024.
In the thick woods of Ghally, I found Silence. You may wonder what attracted me to the title of the claim–silence. I saw all three original female leads: Martha Ankomah, Kalsoum Sinare, and Jackie Appiah. These characters come on the scene about the same time as the male leads, Prince Osei, Van Vicker, and Majid Michel. Almost twenty years ago, no picture was good enough without their presence. Suppose you are an African film buff or old enough. In that case, you will remember the wrist-slashing suicide of Kalsoum Sinare to give her heart to Jackie Appiah since she was her son Majid’s crush, in Who Loves Me (2009) pp 73-75 Nollywood Movie Reviews Vol 1. Princess Tyra (2007) pp 229-230, Nollywood Movie Reviews. Indeed, the trio were the notorious bunch in Ghana movies before Ghallywood. You see why I was attracted to Silence.
Silence is a pastoral literature project. In literature, pastoral projects refer to poems and other narratives about society in its natural environment, as propounded by John Milton, Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Hardy, Mathew Arnold, John Donne, etcetera. Pastorals are stories about the boondock or countryside of society, far away from civilization, motor cars, high-rises, lots of people, and traffic—usually, these narratives concern romance, native lives, and death. Silence could be a suppression of thoughts, resistance (Civil Disobedience), or hiding the truth from the public eye (rape victims) while living with the thoughts and tortures in solitude.
The principal location of Silence is the gloomy seaside fishing village, which reminds me of the macabre tale of The Burial of Kodjo (2018), which is shot in the arid goldmines of Ghana: sibling jealousy and hatred. Like in the introduction, I crown Silence as a pastoral project that takes place far beyond the eyes and ears of the law and God: rapes, abuse of one another go on checked, and characters singularly by themselves are vengeful of transgressors. To wit:
In the first scenes of Silence, the stolidlife of farmers hoeing crops is broken as a pregnant woman runs to them seeking protection when an angry man in pursuit follows her and kicks, strangles, and steps into her stomach, leaving her for dead. A sight not to be held. Just as the father of the household where Yaayo (Kalsoume Sinare) is the supposed matriarch, she undergoes a series of abuses, from an overpowering husband, Apuleway (Kingsley Yamoah), yelling at her, forcing her to bed, and beating her face black. Then the two daughters, Nena Yaa (Jackie Appiah) and Narkie (Martha Ankomah), are both separately raped and deflowered in the process, Narkie drowned, and she is later cremated.
Silence is more like a catalog of the most gruesome incidents that occur in villages where there is no law and no one fights against the status quo. Already in the film, we witness with our own eyes a pregnant woman bludgeoned to death, and we go on to see a mother, Yaayo, abused by a husband and her two daughters violently raped and deflowered. I must not force upon you, dear writer, what you are trying to tell us in your narrative. But you are not telling me and the viewers any story. What you are saying is cataloging to us the gruesome happenings in the backyards of Ghana, way in the boondocks, and not even the ancestral gods could see or avenge these female characters.
Silence is a beautiful story that could be sold as a National Public Service television station documentary, the United Nations Women’s Services for Abused Women, or the World Health Organization for Abused Women Services. It could never be a successful commercial project. It is too dark—a demonstration of societal taboos, the voiceless of the marginalized group of women. Silence is a dark and solemn film that caricatures characters with inner turmoil, a secret they fear to share with no one. For example, Yayoo won’t accept the artist’s picture of her with the black mark under her eyes, indicative of abuse and definite exposure of the husband’s abuse of her.
The characters are all subject to doom as they bear their grief and fear like an eternal burden to the grave; as a friend of hers could comment, “…a beautiful woman like you is going through, and you are hiding it from everyone? Yayoo, do you want to die and leave your daughters? …suffer in silence?” The scene here brings the moment of truth in the story to support both the title and the theme. This is a story of subservience and submissiveness and fear of repercussion from the almighty abusive husband and a society that cares less. I can’t imagine Akosua in Who Loves Me (2010) would slash her wrist to save the life of her son’s crush, Chantel (Jackie Appiah), could stand an abusive husband, and quietly swallow the gruesome mishaps that happened to her two daughters in marriage in Silence.
Generally, we reference most of our discussions to cause and effect in films. I must admit that the cause and effect didn’t ring a bell to me. The first incident in the opening scene, when the pregnant woman was brutally kicked in her stomach, assaulted, and left to die, was not given a reason for the rage of the angry man. Then two, the same fellow who had assaulted the pregnant woman in the earlier scene, quietly creeps into the life of Nena Yaa (Jackie Appiah), rapes her, and leaves her bleeding. Narkie, the youngest daughter, who has met a young fisherman out of the way, is at last victimized by raping her and letting her drown in the river.
Earnestly, The Burial of Kodjo has a story, and Silence doesn’t. Silence could be suitable for a well-researched and informed essay on the abuses of womanhood in a Coastal fishing village of Ghana in National Geographic. Still, it won’t—it can’t—be a commercial success, just as its narrative counterpart, The Burial of Kodjo. The Burial of Kodjo had some acclaim somewhere in film festivals.
I would have preferred that Yayoo narrate Silence in a voice-over so that, at specific points, we can hear her pains, her dilemma, and her children’s conditions. She would have narrated the relationship of the young fellow kicking a pregnant young lady in her stomach to death, making us understand her relationship with the young nurse attending to her hand and why she goes so low as to jump in bed with him. Kalsoume’s objective is to bring us a story to heighten our emotions for all characters in the story, including herself. Still, how she and her children take the pains they undergo in this fishing village is too unbearable for the eye to behold.