Something Necessary
Director: Judy Kibinge
Writer: Mungai Kiroga, Jc Niala
Cast:Susan Wanjiru, Walter Lagat, Kipng’eno Kirui Duncan, Hilda Jepkoech, Carolyne Chebiwott Kibet, Anne Kimani
Part of: FrauenFilmTage
Seen on: 03.03.2015

Plot:
Anne (Susan Wanjiru) wakes up in the hospital to a dead husband and a gravely injured son. They were attacked in their home in the course of the civil unrest after the Kenyan elections, their house was burnt to the ground. Anne sets herself to rebuilding her house and her life. One of the workers who helps her with that project is Joseph (Walter Lagat). What Anne doesn’t know is that he was also one of her attackers, who is quietly trying to set things right. Or at least as right as he can, even though his co-attackers don’t make it easy for him.

Something Necessary left me surprisingly cold. I understood Anne’s position but I never really got into Joseph’s arc or the story itself.

That the film didn’t work for me isn’t the fault of Anne as a character because she was one of the rare examples of a complex, not only likeable woman who fights for the right to live her life the way she wants to, even if her immediate vicinity doesn’t always support or even understand her wishes. She even gets to go overboard with it without that fact torpedoing her original wish. Those are things that are rare in movieworld and that both Kibinge and Wanjiru handle exceedingly well.

But that also means that the lack of care that was taken with Joseph was even more obvious. The character remains flat, his motivation never rings true. It’s all a little too stereotypical – the reluctant gang member full of regrets who tries to get out but can’t really etc etc yadda yadda.

And that was not the only thing where the film is a little uneven. The pacing is off, particularly as long stretches of soulful gazing are followed by unflinching portrayals of violence – which can work but doesn’t here. One might argue that it is indicative of the uneven Kenyan society, but that argument only works when the unevenness doesn’t remove the viewer from the story – but that is exactly what happened to me.

I felt myself drifting through a lot of the film, all the punches it threw at me glancing off without much effect. Too bad.

Summarizing: Might still be worth to check out for the politics and for Anne.