Delivery, consumption and comprehension within the two hours of screen play.
The film is bold enough to delve into the moral evaluation of surrogacy, which I argue is a relatively unknown concept and idea not only in the audience but the society. As a medical practice, surrogacy is looking for it's way into the Kenyan society, and not much is known about it. But the film delves into it, premises the conflict of the story on it, and also attempts to address moral and ethical implications of it. I have a positive bias for films that center on ethical or moral evaluations of human actions, or others that raise or interrogate the ethics and morality of hotly debated concepts like abortion, surrogacy, genetic modification and so on. As such, this film is of interest to me because of the ideology it rides on.
Notably, I find this idea to be very important, yet it is not so well developed. Films that tackle moral and ethical debates are supposed to do it in depth. Nafsi does not. I do not see Aisha, Sebastian and Shiku strongly wrestling with the the pros and cons of surrogacy in their selves, neither do I see them introspecting their actions. Instead, the audience are supposed to imagine the discomfort of the characters with surrogacy (action) by observing the consequences of these very action. Nafsi is loosely translated from Swahili to English as the soul, or sometimes it could mean conscience. The film does not takes us through the mental state of the characters to understand their souls, and does not deeply delve in the philosophy of surrogacy, when it should have been the main idea, in my view. All we have are human actions as products of their souls that we do not know of, but have to deal with.
Films as creative works, I have believed, should always show the moral and ethical direction when contentious issues arise, and this is best noted in admittance of guilt, awareness of errors and mistakes made by the characters, especially when the work is meant for an audience typified with intense relativity in perception. It would be safe to generally conclude that Nafsi attempts this function of art in its representation social disintegration of its characters as repercussion of choices humans make in handling a morally debatable and ethically questionable action.
Overall, Nafsi is a pacesetter for future films in Riverhood. I am cautious not to overrate it, but I can say with confidence that it is above the Kenyan average in the global film industry. Its attention to gay relationship and surrogacy, and reliance on only English language (not Sheng that characterizes Kenyan cinema) should hoist it in the global map, and I am optimistic that these issues could also project its success, particularly on viewership.
