"Farming" is a relatively good film, it tells the world about stories that have not been widely spread. I understand some of the negative reviews but I for sure would not call it "black trauma porn" as there is a message to it. It is not another soul-less movie retelling of the same highly commercialized historical events. There is authenticity to "Farming" and it is very likely due to the fact that the director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje tells his own story through this film. However, in the execution of it, the story got a bit lost in the excess of brutality and impersonal violence.The violent and humiliating scenes were necessary, and the fighting scenes were pretty good but there was just too much of it and eventually there was nothing more to get from these scenes.
I found the depiction of trauma to be pretty good, it might not have been the most realistic at times but it was well transmitted to the audience, we were made to understand. My favorite segment of this film was the one in Nigeria, just from the brutal contrast between Nigeria and Britain I knew I was gonna like it. I love how the movie truly depicted Nigeria through the eyes of a boy who had never been there before and who was going there with a head full of racist stereotypes. The chaos, the overly bright colors, the noise, it was great. And despite the stereotyped point of view it highlighted the issue with some real dogmatic practices in west African society.
That being said, I do have to admit that "Farming" was far from perfect. I struggled a bit with the transitions from scenes to scenes, especially at the beginning of the film, they were a bit awkward and did not really make sense at times. It might be part of the reason why I found the beginning of the film particularly hard to get into. The pace too was irregular, I don't know if it was an artistic choice, but I struggled with it.
Additionally the end of the film was straight up bad in my opinion, it turned the film into a very poorly executed character-development story. In fact I did not even understand what Enitan was aspiring to be in the end. This deeply impacted the quality of the film as it was the ending of it, what the audience will think back on. Stark contrast with the opening scene which did a good job at setting the intrigue.
"Farming" is a relatively good film, it tells the world about stories that have not been widely spread. I understand some of the negative reviews but I for sure would not call it "black trauma porn" as there is a message to it. It is not another soul-less movie retelling of the same highly commercialized historical events. There is authenticity to "Farming" and it is very likely due to the fact that the director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje tells his own story through this film. However, in the execution of it, the story got a bit lost in the excess of brutality and impersonal violence.The violent and humiliating scenes were necessary, and the fighting scenes were pretty good but there was just too much of it and eventually there was nothing more to get from these scenes.
I found the depiction of trauma to be pretty good, it might not have been the most realistic at times but it was well transmitted to the audience, we were made to understand. My favorite segment of this film was the one in Nigeria, just from the brutal contrast between Nigeria and Britain I knew I was gonna like it. I love how the movie truly depicted Nigeria through the eyes of a boy who had never been there before and who was going there with a head full of racist stereotypes. The chaos, the overly bright colors, the noise, it was great. And despite the stereotyped point of view it highlighted the issue with some real dogmatic practices in west African society.
That being said, I do have to admit that "Farming" was far from perfect. I struggled a bit with the transitions from scenes to scenes, especially at the beginning of the film, they were a bit awkward and did not really make sense at times. It might be part of the reason why I found the beginning of the film particularly hard to get into. The pace too was irregular, I don't know if it was an artistic choice, but I struggled with it.
Additionally the end of the film was straight up bad in my opinion, it turned the film into a very poorly executed character-development story. In fact I did not even understand what Enitan was aspiring to be in the end. This deeply impacted the quality of the film as it was the ending of it, what the audience will think back on. Stark contrast with the opening scene which did a good job at setting the intrigue.
