''Mister Johnson'' is a 1990 American drama film based on the
1939 novel by Irish author
Joyce Cary
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary (7 December 1888 – 29 March 1957) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and colonial official.
Early life and education
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary was born in his grandparents' home, above the Belfast Bank in Derry, Ireland in 1 ...
. The film, set in 1929, stars first-time
actor
Maynard Eziashi as a Nigerian who works as a clerk for the British civil service and adopts the style of the British colonialists in the belief that he is a true Englishman. It was the first American film to be shot on location in Nigeria.
Plot
Mister Johnson, a Nigerian who has adopted the style of the British colonialists, works as an assistant to the colonialist judge Harry Rudbeck. He marries Bamu in a Christian marriage ceremony and offers to share his "wealth" and "civilized" life with her, though she continues to behave according to her traditional Nigerian role as a wife instead of like an Englishwoman. Waziri offers to pay Johnson to show him government letters from Rudbeck's office, but Johnson refuses out of loyalty to
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
. Johnson owes money to several people but Rudbeck is unwilling to give him an advance, and Bamu returns to her family's home because Johnson cannot pay the monthly bridal payment. Johnson accepts money from Waziri in exchange for stealing letters from Rudbeck's office that describe Waziri as a plotting liar.
Judge Rudbeck runs out of money for a 100-mile road he is building to the North Road, a major trade route, and Johnson suggests taking money designated for other government projects and using it for the road instead. Rudbeck's wife, Celia, arrives and is dismayed by the accommodations and food. The treasurer, Mister Tring, arrives and identifies anomalies in the cash book, so he fires Johnson and stops work on the road. Johnson begins working at colonialist merchant Sargy Gollup's store with Benjamin and attempts to make profitable trades himself, but his activities cause Sargy to punch him. Benjamin catches Johnson stealing an advance from Sargy's cash box, which Johnson uses to hold a party. He invites the people inside Sargy's store when it starts to rain, despite Benjamin's objections. Sargy returns and punches Johnson, but Johnson fights back and knocks him out. Rudbeck comes to investigate but Sargy says that it was an accident. He gives Johnson one month's advance pay and fires him.
Johnson and Bamu wander looking for work with their newborn son and when the rainy seasons ends work commences on the road again and Rudbeck gives Johnson a job there as a supervisor. Productivity increases but money runs out and construction stops. Johnson tells locals that there is a prize of five pounds to the group that clears the most bush, to be paid to the chief, and work commences again. The workers reach the North Road and a new trade route is established but Rudbeck discovers that Johnson is charging a road fee. He confronts Johnson, who insists that he was only borrowing a little, and forces him to leave instead of having him arrested.
Johnson, Bamu, and their son return to the Zungo, where Bamu's family insists that she return home to them. Johnson asks Waziri for money but Waziri orders his guards to cripple Johnson. Johnson escapes through a window but finds that his wife has already left. He gets drunk and sneaks into Sargy Gollup's store to steal money from the cash box but Sargy catches him and fires his rifle at him. The two fight and Johnson kills Sargy by stabbing him with a pin used to hold receipts. Waziri is ordered by the chief to either find Johnson or someone else to take the blame. Johnson visits his wife to ask for food, where her brother clubs him and turns him in to the authorities. In jail, Waziri's former assistant convinces Johnson to give him his English shoes since he will be hanged soon. After his conviction, Johnson begs Rudbeck to shoot him in order to spare him from hanging. The next morning, Johnson once again begs Rudbeck to shoot him, or at least hang him by his own hand as he considered Rudbeck his friend. After Johnson sang a song about fear, Rudbeck grabs a rifle and shoots Johnson, knowing fully well that this could have an adverse impact on his career.
Cast
*
Maynard Eziashi as Mister Johnson
*
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan (; born 16 May 1953) is an Irish actor and film producer. He is best known as the fifth actor to play secret agent James Bond in the Bond film series, starring in four films from 1995 to 2002 (''GoldenEye'', ''Tomorrow ...
as Harry Rudbeck
*
Edward Woodward
Edward Albert Arthur Woodward, OBE (1 June 1930 – 16 November 2009) was an English actor and singer. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he began his career on stage. Throughout his career, he appeared in productions ...
as Sargy Gollup
*
Beatie Edney
Beatrice Edney (born 23 October 1962) is an English television actress.
Born in London, she is the daughter of actress Sylvia Syms and her husband Alan Edney. Her brother is Benjamin Edney and her cousin is musician Nick Webb. Edney first came ...
as Celia Rudbeck
*
Denis Quilley
Denis Clifford Quilley, OBE (26 December 1927 – 5 October 2003) was an English actor and singer.
From a family with no theatrical connections, Quilley was determined from an early age to become an actor. He was taken on by the Birmingham Rep ...
as Bulteen
*
Nick Reding as Tring
*
Bella Enahoro
Bella is a feminine given name. It is a diminutive form of names ending in -bella. ''Bella'' is related to the Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese and Latin words for beautiful, to the name Belle, meaning ''beautiful'' in French. It increased in ...
as Bamu
*
Femi Fatoba as Waziri
*
Kwabena Manso as Benjamin
*
Hubert Ogunde
Chief Hubert Adedeji Ogunde, D.Lit. (10 July 1916 – 4 April 1990) was a Nigerian actor, playwright, theatre manager, and musician who founded the first contemporary professional theatrical company in Nigeria, the African Music Research Part ...
as Brimah (credited as Chief Hubert Ogunde)
*
Sola Adeyemi
Sola is a municipality and a Seaside resort in Rogaland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Jæren. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Solakrossen. Other villages include Tananger, Håland ...
as Ajali
*
Jerry Linus
Jerry may refer to:
Animals
* Jerry (Grand National winner), racehorse, winner of the 1840 Grand National
* Jerry (St Leger winner), racehorse, winner of 1824 St Leger Stakes
Arts, entertainment, and media
* ''Jerry'' (film), a 2006 Indian fil ...
as Saleh
*
George Menta
George may refer to:
People
* George (given name)
* George (surname)
* George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George
* George Washington, First President of the United States
* George W. Bush, 43rd Presiden ...
as Emil
Production
Adapting the film was a dream project of director
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston ( ; August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and visual artist. He wrote the screenplays for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered ...
, who loved the novel.
The film was shot in
Toro, Nigeria
Toro is a Local Government Area of Bauchi State, Nigeria. Toro local government headquarters is in the town of Toro. The local government has three districts: Toro, Jama'a and Lame district. The local government is the largest local government ...
, using mostly local actors.
It was the first American film to be shot on location in Nigeria. The film is dedicated to the memory of Chief Hubert Ogunde, who helped recruit 150 extras for the road-digging scenes but died in 1990 before the film's completion.
Release
The film did not do well in box office in the US release, as Avenue Pictures, the film's U.S. distribution company, went bankrupt before the release date and "there was no money to release the film", according to the film's producer Michael Fitzgerald, in an interview conducted for Criterion Collection's home video release.
Nevertheless, Fitzgerald consider this his "favorite film". The director
Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford (; born 16 August 1940) is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States.
Beresford's notable films he has directed include ''Br ...
said "... this is the best-reviewed film I have ever made.... My memory is, ''Mr. Johnson'' is the best film I have ever made."
The film was given a PG-13 rating in the United States
and a 12 rating by the
British Board of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC, previously the British Board of Film Censors) is a non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of f ...
.
Reception
The film was well reviewed, but met with criticism for depicting Africans as servants to
colonial Britons.
[
In a positive review of the film, Janet Maslin of '']The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote that "Mr. Beresford's film acknowledges the boundless optimism of its leading character even as it watches him paint himself into a corner" and that Johnson "is at his most purely touching in such joyous moments, loyally celebrating English principles even as they bring about his downfall."
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film three stars, writing that it "is a very subtle film, one where the ideas are sometimes in danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer exuberance of Eziashi's performance." John Simon of the National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...
called Mister Johnson a work of genius.
Mike D'Angelo of ''The A.V. Club
''The A.V. Club'' is an American online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. ''The A.V. Club'' was cre ...
'' wrote that "Johnson comes across on screen as gratifyingly complex—both a scoundrel and a hero, often at the same time. His unfailing optimism, even in the bleakest circumstances, makes him nearly impossible to dislike, no matter what sort of chicanery he's employing or advocating." He summarized that "it's a stronger picture than cinema history perhaps recalls, and welcome evidence that the director of 1989’s alleged Best Picture, though ignored by the Oscars, deserves some attention."
Owen Gleiberman of ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' gave the film a rating of B−, writing that "Johnson, the invisible scoundrel, is never quite as innocent as he seems. Yet when you come right down to it, he’s still pretty innocent. Eziashi plays him with such a relentless, singsong inscrutability that by the end of the movie, he veers uncomfortably close to becoming a liberal-humanist Stepin Fetchit."
Clayton Dillard of ''Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'' gave the film a rating of 3 1/2 out of four stars, writing, "As Bruce Beresford’s follow-up to Driving Miss Daisy, Mister Johnson is both a departure and a continuation, trekking toward more difficult narrative terrain given the colonial African setting, but united by the director’s continued interest in depicting characters, on all sides of a given conflict, with considered compassion."
In a positive essay about the film, Neil Sinyard of The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
wrote that "Beresford is always alert to the comedy of the material" and that Eziashi's performance "was deservedly awarded a Silver Bear at the 1991 Berlin Film Festival."
A review of the film in '' Time Out'' states that Beresford "photographs the landscape prettily, and the film is neatly turned. Eminently respectable, in fact."
In a negative review of the film, Tom Tunney of ''Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'' wrote that the film "fails abysmally because of the grinning shallowness of Eziashi's portrayal and, secondly and much more crucially, because the role he's been lumbered with is a demeaningly cheerful stereotype of the kind that should have gone out with Uncle Tom's Cabin."
On Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
the film has an approval rating of 78% based on reviews from 18 critics.
Accolades
The film was entered into the 41st Berlin International Film Festival
The 41st annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 15 to 26 February 1991. The festival opened with ''Uranus'' by Claude Berri. The Golden Bear was awarded to Italian film '' La casa del sorriso'' directed by Marco Ferreri. The ret ...
, where lead Maynard Eziashi won the Silver Bear for Best Actor
The Silver Bear for Best Actor (german: Silberner Bär/Bester Darsteller) was an award presented at the Berlin International Film Festival from 1956 to 2020. It was given to an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance and was chosen by ...
—it was his first major film role.[
]
Criterion Edition
The film was added to The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
along with Beresford's 1980 film ''Breaker Morant
Harry "The Breaker" Harbord Morant (born Edwin Henry Murrant, 9 December 1864 – 27 February 1902), more popularly known as Breaker Morant, was an Anglo-Australian drover, horseman, bush poet, military officer, and war criminal who was co ...
'' on DVD and Blu-ray on September 22, 2015.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
*
''Mister Johnson: Off the Beaten Track''
an essay by Neil Sinyard at the Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{William Boyd
1990 films
1990 drama films
20th Century Fox films
American drama films
Films scored by Georges Delerue
Films about race and ethnicity
Films based on Irish novels
Films directed by Bruce Beresford
Films set in Nigeria
Films shot in Nigeria
Films set in 1923
Films with screenplays by William Boyd (writer)
1990s English-language films
1990s American films