Mark Reviews Movies: NIGHT OF THE KINGS

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | February 25, 2021

Night of the Kings is a story about stories—and not just the one a young man must tell for an entire night in order to stay alive. Writer/director Philippe Lacôte uses that device to get us thinking about all of the other stories being told here, some of them consciously and some of them unconsciously, perhaps, as a way to get through each day. Everyone here, essentially, is trying to survive by way of a story—to find some purpose or meaning or importance, under circumstances that appear to possess none of those things.

The situation faced by all of these characters is imprisonment. They are occupants of La MACA prison, located in a dense forest outside Abidjan, a major city in Ivory Coast. The prison is officially overseen by a warden, but in reality, it is ruled by an inmate named Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu)—so called after the pirate, after the man went through an experience similar to one endured by the mercenary of the sea. Blackbeard, we learn, is seriously ill, and in some opening text, it's revealed that the tradition within this prison declares that a sitting ruler, unable to rule, must end his life.

Enter a new inmate, unnamed but later dubbed as "Roman" (Bakary Koné), who has arrived after living as a pickpocket within a notorious gang called the Microbes (They got the name from a film, as another reminder about the way stories spread and give meaning). The gang's leader was recently killed, and the warden Nivaquine (Issaka Sawadogo) is ready to offer Roman as harsh a level of treatment as possible. Blackbeard, though, has other plans for the new arrival and summons Roman.

The warden has no say in the matter and spends the rest of the film stewing in his impotence. He has a story here, too, telling himself he is as important as his title suggests, despite all practical evidence to the contrary. That tale he tells himself comes to a head in the film's climax, when the warden decides to employ the only obvious power he possesses.

While a good portion of the film is dedicated to the story Roman eventually tells, about the fate and then the life of his now-dead leader, Lacôte gives us a decent understanding of the internal politics and conflicts within the prison and the inmates. Blackbeard has his devotees, primarily his second-in-command Koby (Stéphane Sebime), and his contenders.

Half-Mad (Jean Cyrille Digbeu) and Lass (Abdoul Karim Konaté) know that Blackbeard's time as ruler of the prison is nearly up, whether or not the man accepts that fact. They both want to take his place, with different ideas about how to run the prison. One wants the keep the status quo, with the inmates as subjects of the "king," and the other sees the possibility of turning everyone into consumers of all the goods the ruler could provide.

In a country that has seen two civil wars within the past two decades, there's little mistaking Lacôte's allegorical intent with this subplot. Indeed, it becomes part of the text in a way, when Roman's story raises an old battle between warring factions (a battle for the country's reign between siblings that turns into a magical duel on the plains) and brings up the most recent civil conflict as the path for his old gang leader to rise to some power.

The plot, such as it is, has Blackbeard naming the new inmate as Roman, the storyteller from some tradition within the prison's system of rules. The Roman's job is tell a story on the event of a blood moon. Blackbeard sees the opportunity of the lunar event as a distraction from his ailing health and the scheming of his opponents.

Roman goes along with it, and then Silence (Denis Lavant), an inmate who probably has a lot of interesting tales to tell (He's the only white man in the prison and carries a pet chicken with him everywhere, but he's mostly, well, silent), explains another rule. If the Roman has completed his story before the break of dawn, the storyteller is killed.

Lacôte weaves together all of these stories (as well as a couple more, including that of a prisoner called Sexy, played by Gbazi Yves Landry, who dresses as a woman and is employed as a sex worker for the inmates). They're fascinating on their own—as an act of narrative desperation on the part of Roman (who has to come up with excuses to keep the story going, even after he has arrived at its end), as a mixture of harsh realism and magic, as a series of political machinations serving as a political fable for a country's recent history. As a kind of collective, the stories here also serve as a study of the psychological drive toward storytelling itself—as a way of finding meaning, of getting through a tough situation, and of literal survival for Roman and possibly Blackbeard.

There's also—and perhaps most effectively—the ways in which Lacôte shows Roman's story as Night of the Kings progresses. It's not only through imagery—literal depictions of the inmate's tale about his dead boss in flashbacks—but also by way of song (laments for the dead), pantomime (re-creating a robbery), and a form of interpretive dance (When the gang leader is described as a scorpion, a group of prisoners form one with their bodies), all of which is performed by the listening inmates. They're spontaneous displays of engagement and interpretation, because this story, particularly in this place, matters. It's all that there is.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products