Blood Vessel: A Brief Review
This is a story that spans the gamut of indigenous mystery and crime thriller. Set in Southern Nigeria– in the oil rich Niger-Delta region. Events unfold in the backdrop of pollution, state sanctioned violence, and economic deprivation. The movie flashes back to a period of serenity and idyllic life in the Nembe community. A period, prior to the discovery of oil. But the present is marked by militant agitations, against environmental destruction by Axis Oil Company.
We spot the radical duo– Boma (Jidekene Achufusi) and Degbe (Levi Chikere)-- spearheading the protest against oil spillage in Nembe. A contingent of soldiers clamp down violently on the protesters, leading to subsequent dispersion of the agitators. Boma and Degbe are livid due to the indignity they suffered at the hands of the high-handed Nigerian army. Thus, they decided to take the law into their hands. They both set a pipeline ablaze in an ungodly hour– a soldier got roasted to death in the process.
The vindictive Nigerian army declares a punitive expedition on the activists in the community. Boma and Degbe are on the run for their lives.
In the midst of this social upheaval, somehow, love in a way, still finds expression. Albeit a tragic tale of affection. The ill-fated lovers, Abbey (Daniel Ezekiel) and Oyinbrakemi (Adaobi Dibor), are nestling like Romeo and Juliet at the edge of a brook. Abbey is despised by his society for being born a half-breed; he's considered a "property child" by his community for being the spawn of an Igbo maid, who stepped into the reproductive role of her boss after years of protracted barrenness.
Oyin is the kind of character you’d encounter in a Greek play like Oedipus Rex. Her mother went to solicit the help of the river goddess for a child, after years of childlessness. The river goddess obliged her under the condition that Oyin would be betrothed to the river goddess; she’d not marry a man or have children in the course of her lifetime. In the event that she breaks the clause, she’d pay dearly for it with her life.
However, Oyin is a defiant character, a revolutionary– poised to rebel against the verdict of the gods. She falls deeply in love with Abbey, heavy with his baby; she’s damning all the retributions of destiny. Oyin is an individual agent with free will, revolting against an inevitable fate. The prominent element of a true tragedy are: choice, consequence, free will and destiny. The characters are individuals with free will, whom conscious decisions inevitably lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.
Oyin is not only calling the bluff of the gods, she also has her impetuous father– Ebiye (Bimbo Manuel), to contend with. In a Shakespearan scene, her father locks her up in a room, with the plan of shunting her to Warri, in a bid to sever her from her lover. She impressed on him that she’s carrying Abbey’s baby. In a fit of rash rage, Ebiye grabs a cutlass in search of Abbey.
In Blood Vessel, events have a way of allying coincidence with fate. Ebiye narrowly missed Abbey in his dreadful manhunt in the market square. Irony also has an uncanny way of unfolding– like Abbey, sneaking ignorantly into his lover's home, then facilitates her escape from house arrest, when she explains her father's plans to abort their baby to him. They both abscond into a world of uncertainties.
In a close at hand town– two ambitious brothers, Tekena (Obinna Ekenwa) and Olotu (Sylvester Ekanem), make preparations to migrate as stowaways, on a voyage, owned by a criminal syndicate of oil smugglers– enroute to Brazil. It's a cliché to say that life is random, and art is an imitation of that entropy. The storyline somehow maintains a fidelity to art mimicking life, by ensuring the lives of these people collide at a junction. Boma and Degbe are fleeing from the Nigerian army; Abbey and Oyin are running from the forces, acting as impediments against their love; while Tekena and Olotu are in search of green pastures, away from the violence of neo-colonial capitalism. The three duos have one thing in common: they are all running away from something.
Their lives are now intertwined by chance, an attempt to protect love, and the human instinct for survival. Charles Okpaleke’s Blood Vessel is steeped in the plot of the inexorable. In a scene, Boma and Degbe find a python curling around Olotu’s neck, they grill it for dinner, and munch it voraciously. The python is believed to be the water spirit in Ijaw superstition. Anyone impudent enough to kill it, let alone smoking it for food would die. This prognostication comes to pass as Boma and Degbe die gruesomely– on the high sea– in the hands of the criminal syndicate onboard.
The love of Abbey and Oyin was put to test on the voyage; a classic display of affection that defies death and transcends time. Oyin loses her life, her body shoved into the sea: a poetic end that buttresses the myth that she came from the water, and to the water she shall return to. The loyalty of Tekena and Olotu was also put on trial. The brothers are presented with the options of getting shot or combating each other to death– the victor gets to leave the ship alive. Tekena embodies the lofty attribute of self-sacrifice in human nature, as he gives up his own life for his brother.
Blood Vessel traverses the themes of love, prophecy, survival, migration, tragedy and destiny. It's a mirror of human existence and its conundrums. The swashbuckling adventures, the lives of the characters, brings to the front burner– the question of the meaning of human life. Perhaps, human existence shouldn't be thought of in terms of meaning– rather, in terms of constants. Those Baldwinian constants in The Fire Next Time: birth, struggle, death, and maybe, love.
It’s a gripping, cinematic masterpiece, with a cohesive plot. The melancholic, Gregorian music, playing in the background of the thrilling actions render the movie as a suspenseful experience.
It’s a 9/10.
