Review: Dahomey

Director:  Mati Diop

Five years isn’t that much of a long time in filmmaking terms – projects come and go and fall by the wayside and the journey from page to screen can be long and circuitous – but it’s certainly felt like a long time in the case of Mati Diop. This is surely because her narrative feature debut Atlantics felt like such a ghostly balm when it landed in 2019. So uniquely hers. It left a lot of those that sat it wanting more, now.

That justly-lauded film is here followed-up in a manner that feels both opportunistic and uncompromised. With a history in documentary short form, Diop has used her new-found platform to make a short-ish feature that might not have gotten so far under other circumstances. At 68 minutes Dahomey doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. But importantly – as it nurtures a pre-established sensibility – it still allows Diop the time to ponder in liminal spaces and suspend her project in an atmosphere of pregnant contemplation.

The subject here is the November 2021 return of 26 native artefacts from Paris to Benin; items seized during the 1892 French invasion of the then-kingdom of Dahomey. It is a simple depiction of their boxing up, transportation and repositioning at the Palais de la Marina, but this crucial geographical change amounts to a seismic moment of cultural shift, one evidently of great importance to the people of Benin. It is notable that the artefacts’ departure from France is witnessed by nearly nobody. They’re almost smuggled out, so clandestine is their exit. But the reception in their African home is triumphant. Processions. Honking car horns. A sense of occasion.

Diop rounds things out with a kind of open symposium in which students of the Abomey-Calavi University have the opportunity to air their thoughts, grievances and concerns about the return of these artefacts, several of whom take the opportunity to soapbox on the continued sense of cultural displacement felt in a country defined for over a century by its colonial past. Alive young minds itemise a tension of identity that one senses is gradually being unraveled. Diop’s picture is keen to celebrate the national pride, and she grows joyously sidetracked by the people, the colours and the bustle found on the streets outside of the hubs of learning that Dahomey mainly inhabits.

In an unusual but, one senses, deeply personal touch, Diop chooses to give life and voice to one of the artefacts, granting it an interior monologue, intoned in the native Fon tongue. ‘No. 26’ is anthropomorphised, given thought and a sense of poetry. This act feels so wonderfully human. Granted, the artefact in question – as with the other the items returned – is an effigy of some kind, denoting a human, humanoid or cryptid form, but the urge to grant sentience to the inanimate is one that we can all associate with to some degree. Instead of coming off as quirky, Diop’s dalliance feels creative, openly subjective, expressive and idiosyncratic.

This, combined with her favour for meditative, contemplative stretches, a hushed soundscape and lyrical asides makes Dahomey a warm and dreamy entry in this year’s clutch of notable documentary features. The anthropomorphism of ‘No. 26’ furthers some unexpected associations. When the items are being boxed up, the associated rites – the care and solemnity of their wrapping and packaging – feels almost funereal in nature. It’s delicate and reverent. The meaning of these simple motions becomes muddied and confused in a manner that’s playful. It suggests an ending or, at least, the turning of a tide.

There’s also a contemplation of time and progress happening in the collision of these ancient works of art with the modern techniques and technologies used to preserve and transport them. This thrums in tandem with the conversations, later on, about legacies, and the position of these historical items in Benin’s burgeoning present and optimistic future.

Dahomey is scaled modestly, but could have sprawled from the discussions taking place at Abomey-Calavi University into something far broader on the subject of modern day Benin. Perhaps it is to serve as a jumping off point for a future project. Either Diop’s own or, through this conversation starter, that of someone inspired by her opening move. Either way this picture acting as an overture doesn’t diminish its effectiveness. It is as accomplished a piece of work as Diop has proffered so far, in longform or otherwise, one that feels like the next natural step in a career that is finding its own way as it goes. Let’s just hope the space between stepping stones grows a little smaller. It’s an ache to wait when the work is this dependably engaging.