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'HALF OF A MELLOW SUM': a review of by Oyin Oludipe Samuel

<body><div class&equals;"booster-block booster-read-block">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"twp-read-time">&NewLine; &Tab;<i class&equals;"booster-icon twp-clock"><&sol;i> <span>Read Time&colon;<&sol;span>2 Minute&comma; 28 Second <&sol;div>&NewLine;&NewLine; <&sol;div><p><strong>Film&colon;<&sol;strong> HALF OF A YELLOW SUN<br>&NewLine;<strong>Director&colon;<&sol;strong> BIYI BANDELE<br>&NewLine;<strong>Screenplay&colon;<&sol;strong> BIYI BANDELE<br>&NewLine;<strong>Producer&lpar;s&rpar;&colon;<&sol;strong> Andrea Calderwood&comma; Gail Egan<br>&NewLine;<strong>Run time&colon;<&sol;strong> 111 minutes<br>&NewLine;<strong>Reviewer&colon;<&sol;strong> OYIN OLUDIPE SAMUEL<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Biyi Bandele’s film adaptation of the 2006 novel&comma; Half of a Yellow Sun is bold as well as daring&period; To think that Adichie’s beautiful sentences would materialize into camera light and movements catches the fancy of an anxious mind&semi; yet&comma; as the scenes would play out in a hurry&comma; the book imageries fit into the screen in an instance and then diverge in some others&comma; marooned by the yawning absence of depth as it concerns the political tone of the author’s story and the complete manifestation of her characters&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Like this&comma; Calderwood and Egan’s production is riddled with intentions but only succeeds as the struggling shadow of a magnum opus&comma; the half of a mellow sum&period; A lot of things are muted – like a placeable Igbo from the lips of Thandie Newton &lpar;Olanna&rpar; or Okeoma’s highbrow poetry&comma; or the intellectual radicalism of Chiwetel Ejiofor &lpar;Odenigbo&rpar; and his friends&comma; or Ugwu’s inventiveness in kitchen and on battlefield&semi; and&comma; again&comma; not stressing the awkward supplanting of Joseph Mawle’s &lpar;Richard&rpar; heroic adventurism against a sordid backdrop of need and lily livers&period; All of these which are the swirling landscapes in Adichie’s book elude sight&period; It dilutes the intensity of the bravery that led to the penning of an aesthetic frustration&comma; as well as its historic concomitance with the Nigerian civil war&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>However&comma; before the levies of expectation are foisted&comma; I like to reason that adaptations are only pseudo-reproductions of perfection&period; They cannot be as seamless or as willed as their preceding concepts&period; As also played out in C&period; S&period; Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia&comma; J&period; K&period; Rowling’s Harry Potter or Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird&semi; there seems to be the cert of a spawn-shortcoming&period; It is&comma; perhaps&comma; for this reason alone that Biyi Bandele’s scraper-movie can be forgiven of its commonplace&period; One might say that these were the reformative handiwork of the instruments of an intended melodrama or that an initiative has simply generously sought to animate national history &lpar;even if in its sheerest skein&rpar;&period; While the former is dismissible&comma; the latter cannot be&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>In retrospect&comma; not much of Nigerian authorship has essentially translated into cinemas&period; Films such as Wole Soyinka’s Blues for a Prodigal and Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in the 1980’s were a welcome yet weakened phenomenon as literature progressed forth into the twenty-first century Nigeria&period; In this light&comma; Half of a Yellow Sun also comes across as a revolutionary meteor across the conformist void of the modern Nigerian literary scene&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p style&equals;"text-align&colon; center&semi;"><a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;praxismagonline&period;com&sol;half-of-a-mellow-sum&sol;&percnt;C2&percnt;A0" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank" rel&equals;"noopener noreferrer">Read the full review on <strong>PRAXIS MAGAZINE <&sol;strong><&sol;a><&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote><p><em>Oyin Oludipe&comma; poet&comma; playwright&comma; blogger and critic&comma; studied Mass<a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;praxismagonline&period;com&sol;half-of-a-mellow-sum&sol;&num;76447051"> Communication <&sol;a><&sol;em><em> <&sol;em><em>at Babcock University&comma; Nigeria and edits non-fiction at Expound Magazine&period;<&sol;em><&sol;p><&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p> <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p> <&sol;p>&NewLine;&NewLine; &NewLine; <div class&equals;"booster-block booster-author-block">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"be-author-details layout-square align-left">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"be-author-wrapper">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"booster-row">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"booster-column booster-column-two booster-column-mobile">&NewLine; <div class&equals;"be-author-image">&NewLine; <img alt&equals;"" src&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;secure&period;gravatar&period;com&sol;avatar&sol;3de36b6da89639b3d80d015f84d2cfc35212bb0678ceb13c46dc8c712831d196&quest;s&equals;400&amp&semi;d&equals;mm&amp&semi;r&equals;g" class&equals;"avatar avatar-400 photo 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