#THE QUEEN OF KATWE MOVIE MOVIE#
Though the film is touted as a sports movie and actually resembles a chess-version of 2006’s delightful Akeelah and the Bee, the real strength of the film lies in its honest portrayal of the everydayness of the everyday characters as they encounter challenges and work through the messiness of life under Adam’s curse (Genesis 3:17-19). They are human beings who have stories like we have who have hopes, dreams, and disappointments like we have whose city and nation have economic and class struggles like ours have. Nair’s direction collaborates with Sean Bobbitt’s cinematography to capture both congested metropolitan slums as well as the expansive, lush Ugandan countryside in which we see a panoply of darkly hued and beautifully complexioned people not from our Western world, but also not unlike us. Classic Storytelling and Unconventional Narratives Rather, the very Christ-like pattern of suffering, brokenness, and weakness mark the road that eventually leads to her emergence from abject poverty and obscurity into renown as a national hero and royal representative of her people. Nalwanga convincingly gives us a teenager caught in the formative years of life who establishes her figurative throne not by way of socially-acceptable physical beauty or by way of a handsome prince’s rescue… not even really because of her intelligence or keen moves on the chess board. Newcomer Madina Nalwanga delivers quietly, yet forcefully as Phiona Mutesi, the alluded-to queen of the impoverished Ugandan province, Katwe. Lupita Nyong’o effectively executes the role of Nakku Harriet, the mother of the film’s titular character and the atypical matriarch whose faith and sacrificial love for her family grow despite a continuous and seemingly endless string of misfortunes that begin when her husband and the father of her four children dies unexpectedly. William Wheeler’s screenplay adequately displays Katende’s internal moral struggle that eventuates in his rejection of an offer to undertake a successful engineering career to instead coach a team of social outcasts - i.e. Here, we have the kind of creative and engaging expression of spirituality found in such recent works as 2015’s Selma and The Revenant and this year’s Hail Ceasar!, Hell or High Water, and Birth of a Nation.īased on true events as chronicled in the 2012 book Tim Crother published for ESPN, Katwe stars David Oyelowo as Robert Katende, a sports ministry leader who often opens chess matches with a word of prayer and employs culturally-significant parables as a means of motivating his players to persevere in the face of challenges both on and off the chess board. In veteran director Mira Nair’s vision, we see strands of references to faith organically and quietly pervading the film without ever becoming overbearing or overt.
Disney’s Queen of Katwe remains within the tradition of unintentional Christian filmmaking that prefers subtle nuances and unspoken demonstrations of conviction over tired clichés, recycled tropes, wooden characters, and soap-boxy platitudes positing overly simplistic answers to the complexities of life lived in a fallen world.
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