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True emotional uplift is hard to accomplish in the movies, especially in “based on a true story” variations that trend towards easy emotional manipulation and sugary sentimentality. Leave it to a more idiosyncratic director like Mira Nair to take the “child prodigy-made-good-through-sports” story under Disney’s guiding hand and make it feel vibrant, alive, and fresh.
Queen of Katwe tells the true of Phiona Mutesi, a young girl growing up in the slums with her widowed mother (Lupita Nyong’o), getting discovered by a coach (David Oyelowo) during his missionary work, and her quest to become a master player. There’s a vibrancy of life, complete with its hardships and specificity and essence of life in this place.
It would be easy to revel in a misery porn tone throughout these early scenes of intransigent poverty and selling corn on the streets. Another film would play up the misery and struggle, but there’s a core of strength to these characters in the ways they get up every day and just keep fighting. This is exemplified in a scene between Oyelowo and Nyong’o at the marketplace. Oyelowo praises Nyong’o’s persistence in trying to provide and care for her children despite overwhelming odds, and her face positively glows, radiating a hard-won sense of victory and verging on joyous tears for someone recognizing her strength.
The film’s drunk on color and textures adding a more unique spin on the typical plot moves. A reoccurring theme of chess as metaphor for life is creaky, and the longer the film goes on the more structurally predictable it becomes. But there’s a lot of meat in the concurrent metaphor in chess as symbolic of a class divide. The resilience of these kids to prove their worth against the more privileged plays out with the games, and with the brightness of their clothes in contrast to the coolness of their uniforms.
Even better is the way that Nair populates this film with strong players. Of course, David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong’o are perfection, but newcomer Madina Nalwanga is its luminous heart. Oyelowo is sacked with some of the worst cliché inspiring lines, but he delivers them with grit and determination. Oyelowo is fast becoming one of the strongest actors of his generation, each performance a study in earnestly felt emotion and strong vocal delivery. Nyong’o finally graces us with her presence again since her Oscar-winning work in 12 Years a Slave, after two films in which she did motion-capture and vocal work. Her work here is transformative, burying her natural grace and poise into a woman beaten around by life but not ready to lie down for the count.
While the pros give typically strong work, it’s Nalwanga who lingers longest in the mind for the first role. Just like Mutesi is preternaturally gifted at chess, Nalwanga is preternaturally gifted with holding the camera. She’s bright, open, and delicately finding the balance of coming into her own while harnessing the strength inherited from her mother. I hope this is merely the first role in a long career should Nalwanga want it, as she’s got a certain something special about her. I think of her leading a young adult franchise!
Queen of Katwe is sentimental, yes, but it’s the right kind of sentimentality at play here. In another director’s hands, who knows what this material would have looked like. Luckily, it’s in Mira Nair’s strong hands, and she never condescends to the material, nor loses sight of the harshness and fears lurking around every corner in the slums. Even when the script gets ham-fisted in its emotional uplifting speechifying and awkwardly hoary in its “underdog-makes-good” sports clichés, there’s a throbbing, pulsating energy to the material that is completely unique to any of the other films in this genre. What a lovely, compassionate, and warm movie this is. We need more stories like this.
