The Woman King is Awesome. Fights are Cool. History is Horrible.

 Here are Thuso Mbedu and Viola Davis playing a scene we've watched many times before, in Disney cartoons, in Tom Cruise vehicles, in Young Adult fantasies – I mean, it was dumb of me to even begin this list because it's absolutely endless. When I saw it in The Woman King yesterday however, it felt fresh. Watching Viola Davis act always feels like the best way of spending one's time, but Thuso Mbedu...

 

 

 I don't think I've ever seen played as well as I have here the story of a strong-willed young outlier trying to find both the respect of their elders and their place in history, which isn't bad considering it's pretty much half of all stories told (and not my favourite usually; I like stories about monsters and slackers). Gina Prince-Bythewood's The Woman King might be the best Historical Romance I've seen since... I don't know... Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves? No it has so much over that film, even that film, but I wanted to give a hint of how – in the best way – basic an entertainment it is too. Basic, not dumb.

 

Procession of the wealth of King Ghezo, painted in 1851 by Forbes (source) 

 

 The all-female army of the Agodjié are its heroes, and they're introduced to us the way many Romances might introduce a villain: with a ruthless raid on a village under cover of darkness, all survivors pressed into captivity, but I'll come back to that. Here is another introduction, as campaigning Benin lawyer and four-time presidential candidate Marie Elise Gbedo learns of the Agodjié's extraordinary origins for BBC Africa. Happy hundredth birthday, BBC!

 

 

 

"They told me about Joan of Arc at school, without telling me about my queen. Why is that?"

 After watching the The Woman King I realised I did actually already know about the Agodjié, from a superb and quite heartbreaking documentary Lupita Nyong'o had made for Channel 4 after the release of Black Panther. I learnt today that Nyong'o was originally going to be in The Woman King herself, but dropped out shortly after filming this documentary, and Mbedu took over, although correlation isn't causation...

 

   Like Marie Elise Gbedo, Nyong'o visited the Agodjié's original compound in Dahomey and marveled at the reliefs of them absolutely segmenting their male enemies. Unlike Gbedo, she not only talked to the UNESCO world heritage site's curator, but to its current King, who claims descent from a man able turn into a panther. "So dope," to quote Nyong'o.

 

 It was the documentary's last scenes that stuck in my mind most however, when a heartbroken Nyong'o visited the "Door of No Return" – Benin's monument to those shipped off from its shores as slaves – having learnt that the Agodjié warriors she had so grown to admire had also pressed into slavery her own guide's great-grandmother. One has to take care when presenting warriors as heroes - Well no, actually one doesn't, that's the problem. There's nothing stopping you turning History into a messiah fantasy like Braveheart, or a revenge fantasy like Gladiator, but the best historical narratives present someone we root for navigating this horror – kicking arse, sure, but also bound by a little bit of politics. The Woman King does this wonderfully, beginning its story where Nyong'o left it. It also has a really nice bath in it. It is outstanding.