Native to sub-Saharan Africa, the guinea fowl is a communal bird that doubles as a guard animal. Whenever a predator is nearby, guinea fowl begin to chirp in cooperation with other guinea fowl to alert all within earshot that a predator is among them.
The families at the heart of On Becoming a Guinea Fowl sure could use a couple of those early warning birds around. Then again, this movie isn’t about being a guinea fowl but becoming one. We all have work to do.
Written and directed by Rungano Nyoni, Guinea Fowl opens with Shula (Susan Chardy) driving along a desolate road in Zambia wearing a bejeweled headdress and visor — she looks like a fighter pilot out of a futuristic 1980s Cannon Film — and a large black puffy outfit when she comes across her Uncle Fred (Roy Chisha) lying dead in the road. We’ll later learn Shula is coming home from a costume party. But for these first 10 minutes, her unusual outfit goes uncommented on and strands the audience in the space between realistic and speculative storytelling.
Nyoni doubles down on that liminal space when Shula catches a vision of herself as a young girl (Blessings Bhamjee) standing over the body of Uncle Fred. Shula then calls her father (Henry B.J. Phiri), who says he’ll come but doesn’t, tries to ward off her intoxicated cousin (Elizabeth Chisela) and waits for the authorities to come claim the body.
The death of Uncle Fred sets off the ritualized mourning period where the extended family congregates, cries and grieves through all hours of the night, prostrating themselves while pleading for their portion of the inheritance. For some, it’s performative. For others, the wailing feels like real sorrow. Shula detests it all. She’s more of a fixer, the person responsible for holding everything and everyone together. Particularly the young Bupe (Esther Singini), whose coping mechanism is an unmentioned substance that has her upright and fine one moment, hospitalized the next.
Shula’s coping mechanism is repression. Or would dissociation be a better word? In one scene, Shula is out running errands — who cooks and serves the food is a central component of the mourning period — but thanks to Nyoni and cinematographer David Gallego’s camera placement, we can see Shula is just driving in circles. Add to that a handful of off-kilter dream sequences, which are revealed to be dreams only retroactively, and realistic scenes that still contain a mystical quality and Nyoni’s images of entrapment become tangible.
Uncle Fred is the reason Shula and the rest of the family are trapped — in history, in tradition, in obfuscation. There’s an inquest into how Uncle Fred died alone on that road, but what good is an inquest if the people don’t believe the findings?
The most telling response comes when Shula discovers the body in the first place. There seems to be no remorse in her eyes, only riddance. But can this family rid themselves of Uncle Fred and all he represents? After the fact, probably not. The tragic swath he cut will stick to this family like a shadow for years to come. Their only hope is not to rid themselves of the past but to protect themselves from the future. If only there were some kind of communal warning system in place to alert others when a predator was around. If only there were more guinea fowl. The time has come to become one.
ON SCREEN: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl opens in theaters March 21.