FILM REVIEW: THE FIRST GRADER – FREELANCE PRIMATE
Review by Stephen Carnell
Director: Justin Chadwick
Writer: Ann Peacock
Cast: Naomie Harris, Oliver Litondo
Synopsis: In a small remote mountain top primary school in the Kenyan bush, hundreds of children are jostling for a chance for the free education newly promised by the Kenyan Government. One new applicant causes astonishment when he knocks on the door of the school. He is Maruge (played by Oliver Litondo), an old Mau Mau veteran in his eighties, who is desperate to learn to read, even at this late stage of his life. Maruge fought for the liberation of his country and now feels he must have the chance of an education so long denied – even if it means sitting in a classroom alongside six-year-olds. Moved by his passionate plea, head teacher Jane Obinchu (played by Naomie Harris) supports his struggle to gain admission and together they face fierce opposition from parents and officials who don’t want to waste a precious school place on an old man. Through Maruge’s journey, we see a Kenyan society as it functions today, as well as being taken back to the shocking and virtually untold story of British colonial rule 50 years earlier, when Maruge fought for the liberation of his country.
Review: ‘The First Grader’ is the true story of an extraordinary journey made by a remarkable man, Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge, as he struggles for redemption from the horrors of his past by finally learning to read and write, so he can ultimately read the mysterious letter sent to him by the government of Kenya. The story begins in 2002, when the Kenyan Government announces free primary education for all. Maruge takes them up on their offer, only to find that they only meant this offer for children.
Screenwriter Ann Peacock, who had adapted box office success ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, read an article in the Los Angeles Times about Maruge and was strongly drawn to this subject as a potential screenplay. Peacock said; “I have to do this story… this is a man who is illiterate and poor and has nothing, but he just wants to learn to read. To be prepared to humble himself in such a way, to go to a primary school … I thought that was the most amazing thing.”
Funding the film was difficult, even with a successful screen writer on-board. But ultimately the Head of BBC Films, David Thompson agreed, and when he subsequently set up his own production company, Origin Pictures, The First Grader became their very first production.
By adding Justin Chadwick as director, who had recently directed ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, this relatively obscure story about rural Kenya now had the right ingredients for a potent international production.
It was decided that the film would be shot on location in rural Kenya and that the children would be cast from real school children, untutored in acting.
The producer did manage to meet the real Maruge during pre-production, but sadly he died of cancer even before the role was cast to Oliver Litondo, a retired TV News anchorman, who had always wished to act. British actress, Naomie Harris, known for her work in Pirates of the Caribbean movies, was cast as the defiant school principal, Jane Obinchu, after an extensive search of potential actresses in Africa.
The genuine nature of the casting and the location gives this film story a powerful breadth and depth. Especially in the way that the film’s director shows us the interaction between Maruge and the children packed into the tiny classroom.
Maruge’s determination and courage is truly amazing. When told he can only come to school if he is wearing a school uniform, the poverty stricken old man scrounges scraps of cloth and cast-off garments, then sews these oddments himself into a facsimile of a school boy’s shorts, long socks and jumper ensemble, plus bag and books. He then turns up a school just like any other 8 year-old. The sight of this man in his mid-eighties, limping for miles to the schoolroom ‘shed’ in the middle of a dusty valley is heart-rending.
We later learn that Maruge’s toes were cut off when he was tortured by the British in the fifties, as part of his lengthy interrogation as a suspected member of the Mau Mau liberation movement. The many flashbacks in the film, which inform us of Maruge’s past, are revelatory. They give us an understanding that the real mission of the Mau Mau was to liberate Kenya from the oppressive rule of the British. In the past, the Anglo-impression of the Mau Mau was as a diabolical gang of blood-thirsty murderers who slaughtered white farmers purely to gratify their dark hearts.
This film enables us to learn to respect the choices that Maruge made in the past, even when these cost him the lives of his wife and child, and the choices he made as an old man, even when these cost him his health and dignity. In his determination he triumphs over his past and present and ultimately becomes a ‘poster’-boy’ for the Kenyan Education Department and later travels to America to address the United Nations.
This is an intelligent, enlightening, non-schmaltzy tale that is completely riveting and not to be missed.
