If a viewer wants to kick off his algorithms and settle into that elusive “something different” on Netflix, a welcome destination would be “ Elesin Oba : The King’s Horseman,” the last movie by the Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker Biyi Bandele , who died in August.
His “Half of a Yellow Sun” with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandiwe Newton was a successful adaptation of the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie novel back in 2013, but “Horseman” is something else, a combination celebration of and elegy for cultural autonomy and something of a cheeky homage to African cinema.
Based on the play “Death and the King’s Horseman” by Wole Soyinka (winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature), the story is based on actual events during World War II, when Nigeria was an occupied British colony.
The eponymous horseman is a Yoruba chief who is about to commit ritual suicide; the people’s king has been dead a month and it is time for Elesin Oba (the lusty Odunlade Adekola ) to follow his ruler into the afterlife (lest the king be left to wander and bring ill on his people).
The British, as directed by the colonial magistrate, Simon Pilkings ( Mark Elderkin ), think suicide is a profoundly bad idea and set out to save Elesin’s life, even if it means killing people in the process.