When the government of Kenya promises a free public education to anyone with a birth certificate, schools are flooded with children of all ages. But one school also attracts the unlikeliest of pupils: 84-year-old Kimani Maruge (Oliver Litondo), who in the 1950s fought with the Mau Mau in their rebellion against imperialist British rule. Although Maruge faces resistance from both parents of the other students and education officials, the school’s head teacher, Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris), believes he deserves an education just as much as anyone else, even going so far as to put her career and marriage in jeopardy.

CRITIQUE

The First Grader is based on a true story. Do I need to go on? Can you deduce for yourself that this amazing story has been corrupted and tainted, transformed from a genuinely inspiring, uplifting story into a cliché product? I wish it hadn’t been, but I guess the filmmakers thought the real story wasn’t inspiring or uplifting enough. I can almost hear them: “An octogenarian who decided to better himself fifty years after fighting for his homeland’s independence, walked to school every day for several years, ended up in the Guinness Book of World Records, and was invited to speak at the United Nations? Who wants to see that? What people want to see is something that looks like a mixture of Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, and Gladiator, so get cracking on that.”

The movie can’t make up its mind what it wants to be about. Ann Peacock’s script uses the same structure most movies of this ilk employ, taking a familiar path to an unsurprising conclusion. The story is full of asides (most of them entirely fictional, many of them shopworn), subplots, and themes that are introduced but never developed. Mention is made of the tribal prejudice that continues to plague Kenya, but nothing becomes of it. Thugs who think Maruge is striking it rich off his newfound celebrity appear out of nowhere and try to get their share of the pie, but this is quickly forgotten about. Obinchu’s support for Maruge leads to her husband’s life being threatened, which is introduced and resolved (read: dropped) in less time than it will take you to read this sentence.

Is any of this necessary? No, not at all. Maruge’s story is one of those tales so good and so surprising you couldn’t possibly invent anything more compelling or astounding. But the filmmakers remove most of the surprises and replace them with stock situations. The real Maruge fathered fifteen children, lived long enough to be a great-grandfather, and attended school with a two of his grandkids.

The one in the movie watches as his wife and only child are killed (in slow motion, naturally), sold out by traitors and slaughtered by British troops. Does this serve any purpose in the story? Not really, but it does afford director Justin Chadwick numerous (far too numerous, in fact) opportunities to flash back to an image of Maruge’s wife slowly walking through a grassy veldt (hence the Gladiator similarities) and smiling broadly. It’s obviously meant to be a heart-tugging moment, but it fails, as it’s cliché and we know nothing about Maruge’s relationship with her. They have a kid, she smiles a lot, and I guess that’s supposed to equate to idyllic.

We also learn very little about Maruge. The movie never mentions the reason the real Maruge wanted an education, instead inventing a reason and then rendering it nonsensical during the contrived final scene. There are flashes to his days in the Mau Mau, but they’re mostly just scenes of him being tortured by sneering British troops, offering no context and never delving into exactly what drove him and why he still clings to whatever ideals he formed. (The scenes of torture are ineffectual; the one in which the reason Maruge never wants to sharpen his pencil [which raises questions of how a man who spends much of time writing is able to get by without ever sharpening it] is revealed is unintentionally hilarious.)

Although Maruge’s story is enough to fill two movies, The First Grader inexplicably switches its focus to Obinchu in its second half, turning into a standard story of a teacher who inspires her students but butts heads with her superiors. It goes through all of the standard motions before suddenly becoming ridiculously silly, climaxing first with a scene that looks like it was lifted from an old Little Rascals short and the climaxing again (insert your own dirty joke here) with a scene in which Maruge travels many miles to plead his (and her) case before Kenya’s Department of Education.

I don’t how long the trip takes him (or how he knows where to go, or how he knows which bus to take, or how he affords the fare) but it’s long enough for this illiterate man who spent much of his life plowing the same small plot of land to become a philosopher and orator, his broken, halting English giving way to a rich voice that commands attention, his limited vocabulary giving way to erudition and wisdom. (Remember that bit in Pearl Harbor where FDR stood up from his wheelchair? It’s almost that bad.)

These final scenes take the place of what anyone with a brain could have seen was the story’s real conclusion. The real Maruge spoke at the United Nations in 2005, giving a speech on the importance of education. There’s your climax right there. But that’s not even shown here. Come on, how do you not show that?

Had the script been worthy of Litondo’s and Harris’s performances (they’re both excellent), The First Grader really could have been something. And what I mean by that is a script that said the hell with the clichés and told the real story, one that actually explored the political, historical, and cultural landscape of Kenya instead of using the turmoil and strife as fuel for trite platitudes and tin-eared dialogue.

But I think Maruge’s story would have been best served by a documentary, which would have had an easier time digging into and presenting the necessary background. And I’d much rather have heard him tell it in his own words and see the emotion on his face. Imagine how inspiring that could have been. But it’s not to be, as Maruge died in August of 2009. The final years of his life were just as eventful and fraught with terror and violence as his time with the Mau Mau, and it took terminal cancer to put an end to his schooldays. He deserved something better than this uninspired, uninspiring collection of clichés.                

THE VIDEO

The First Grader is presented in a 1.78:1 ratio; the transfer has been enhanced for anamorphic displays. Here’s the thing: the movie was shot in Super 35, with the intended aspect ratio 2.35:1, which is how it was framed during theatrical showings. I have no idea why it was cropped here; even more puzzling, all of the film clips in this disc’s supplements are presented in the correct ratio. And cropped it has been. I’d initially thought perhaps the fat Super 35 negative had been opened up (which often happened when DVDs or videotapes of movies shot in the process were released in full-screen versions), but it’s clear the sides of the image have been chopped off, as compositions are off in most shots, cramped and squished, the openness and emptiness of the Kenyan landscapes Chadwick was obviously going for lost in the process. On top of that, the quality of the image isn’t so hot. The sun beats down and bakes everything, blowing out whites and giving the image a very soft, hazy quality. Depth is flat; colors have been washed out, which is probably somewhat intentional but appears to have been exacerbated by the haze.  

THE AUDIO

The sole audio option is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Aside from one scene in which Maruge’s shanty is attacked by a swarm of angry men (part of yet another subplot that goes absolutely nowhere), the audio never strays from the front channels. There’s an okay enough spread across the front channels, and dialogue sounds fine. English SDH subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The Making of The First Grading (13 minutes) is a standard behind-the-scenes piece.

The First Grader: The True Story of Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge (13 minutes) is a 2006 documentary short. Produced by the same team behind the feature, it focuses on the real Maruge, doing in thirteen minutes what the movie fails to do in 103 (which really makes me wish someone had made a feature-length documentary).

Short interview clips (19 minutes) with director Chadwick and a few of the actors who portray Maruge’s classmates are also included.

Closing things out is the movie’s theatrical trailer.

FINAL THOUGHTS