West Indies

Surprising as it might seem to those who've only seen Hondo's earlier films, this is very much a musical. The film is slicker, larger more choreographed than 'Soleil O', and feels at once theatrical and totally filmic. A run-through of the history of the Francophone Caribbean, and a political argument against dependence on and migration to France, in a sense, it sets Soleil O's Pan-African migrant experience in a more specific context and extends the more pageant-like chronological fables that pepper the former film to greater length, using Daniel Boukman's play as its basis. Shot inside an enormous, life-size ship constructed inside a factory, seen in the opening shots, the film-both for practical purposes (there would be no other way to film it), and for structural ones-reveals its own set. Hondo has actors double multiple roles; further doubling occurs in presenting multiple spaces and time frames in this single, capacious structure. As such, 'West Indies' borrows two important conventions of stage plays that are generally left out of film, with its greater flexibility of available actors and available space. In doing so, it turns these conventions into a potent comment on a history in which the same basic colonial power relations are perpetually retained under a different guise; in presenting the ship as both the metropolitan centre and the (post)colonial periphery, Paris and the Caribbean, it amplifies their connections; in staging all of this is in a giant factory, it suggests the ways in which the raw materials worked at through slave and post-slave labour were always at the heart of, and entrapped within, the industrial potency they enabled. The music and choreography are elaborate, slick, witty and moving all at once; I can think of little like this.

A political stage theatre, musical, satire and history lesson all in one: Covering hundreds of years of colonialist, slavery, exploitation and disenfranchisement.

Now this is a Hondo closer to his roots in O Soleil, and what an incredible, mad and beautiful film!

To talk about West Indies, we need to talk about the minimalist setting, and extraordinary scope. Almost every scene is set, fittingly enough, one a stage made to look like a large ship - used both as the transportation of slaves - and as the actual unnamed island home of our study. The black people, with the exception of those set forth to lead them, are always in the bay - that is their home - above them, the higher deck, is the place of parties, elites and rigged elections - and one step higher - that of the 5 people truly ruling the island - in France's stead.

Above them: France's slogen: "Liberty. Equality. Fraternity." - and as we move through the ages, the slogan changes.

We are also fitted to our secondary setting, which is also where our film opens with our 5 elites - the captain's lounge - a throne room with 5 chairs. Their faces remain the same, even as the trail through history - and see them put their "plan" into action.

Their plan: cheap labour - and, well, power. (Not to mention the complete displacement of the entire people)

Slavery, or low paid workers, it makes no difference - and as the film intercuts slave transportation with immigration - and the plot moves to have more and more French take over the island - it truly is a look at how history rhymes - not to mention the complacency and complicity for those allowed to join in the ride.

But what sets West Indies further apart is their dance numbers, and songs - playing into the seduction of France and Paris - the submission and happiness of "assimilation" for those on top - and songs of struggle and freedom of the people.

It even manages to take snipes at petty white revolutionaries, either propagating xenophobia themselves or uttering empty phrases without care and insight.

And "pretty speeches", lies, deceit and complicity is a theme throughout; no one is really spared - though the film's message is clear: take power into your hands and free yourself.

What is truly striking, beyond the scope and message - is how Hondo managed to craft it all, not just within the allegory of a slave ship, but within a literal ship - and the incredible way he plays with form and setting.

Decades before Dogville, he allowed us to suspend our disbelief, and see and understand the boat to be any setting - and the choreography and songs simply feel at home in the visual and formatic landscape he created. The humour, the emotion and the al-together experience becomes something more than real life - and it is through this overt performance of history, that the nature of this reality - past and present - as Hondo sees it - can fully be expressed.

With "West Indies" Med Hondo shows his artistry and unequivocal commitment to the plight of the disadvantaged and disenfranchised minority of this planet - The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty. He wanted to free the very concept of musical comedy from its American trade mark, he said. "I wanted to show that each people on earth has its own musical comedy, its own musical tragedy and its own thought shaped through its own history." And he sure did, with a grandios and enslaving musical, tracing the history of the West Indies through several centuries of French oppression. Though, sadly, the director never truly feels to grasp the film's full potential, thus never bringing forth a resolute cry of, lets call it pain of lack of better words.

I found this movie on SIght & Sound's Critics' Poll of 2022. Considering the discrepancy between the popularity in that poll and the number of voters on IMDb, this has clearly made an impression on the way few people who have seen this movie.

And it is good. It is very open about the damage racism, slavery, corruption and colonization have inflicted upon the titular West Indies, but it somehow manages to do this in a kind of a fun way without the dissonance between the themes and the approach feeling in any way contrived.

You get the feeling that while this might not be the literal historical truth, it is defiinitely the spiritual historical truth. Things might not have happened exactly like this, but as a musical, you forgive that. It's close enough.

Many of the characters are more like.archetypes than actual characters, but due to the nature of the film, where the same actors play pretty much the same roles through 400 years of history, that works very much for the benefit of the film.

This is very much a movie I would hope more people would have access to.