‘Dahomey’ Review: Mati Diop Tracks the Return of African Treasures Plundered by the French in Powerful Consideration of Reparations
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With her mesmerizing 2019 debut feature, the lyrical Senegalese ghost story Atlantics, as well as the nonfiction project that preceded it, A Thousand Suns, Mati Diop jumped to the forefront of diasporic Black European directors reclaiming their ancestral African roots. The director’s own path as a cultural revenant continues to be inextricably woven through her work, alongside a contemplative consideration of repatriation and reparations, in her multifaceted medium-length docu-fictional essay Dahomey.
The film is both a response to Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s 1953 inquiry into African art and colonialism, Statues Also Die, and an ongoing debate on the significance of returned artifacts and the responsibility of new generations to continue the vital work of conservation and cultural reclamation.
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Running just over an hour but loaded with thematic weight and aesthetic beauty, Dahomey sprang from the French government’s return, in 2021, of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey to their original home in what is now the West African Republic of Benin.
Plundered by French colonial troops in 1892, the artifacts date back to the reigns of King Ghezo (1818-1858), King Glèlè (1858-1889) and King Béhanzin (1889-1894), Dahomey’s final independent ruler before the three-century dynasty became part of the French colonial empire in 1895.
In the opening section, treasures including statues, royal thrones and carved doors, made of wood, metal and fibers, are carefully crated and prepared for transportation from the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris to the economic capital of Cotonou in Benin. Exhibition curator Calixte Biah catalogs every crack or missing part or sign of damage in each piece. The scrutiny of the camera in some ways echoes the observational style and attention to every step of a complicated process that you might find in a Frederick Wiseman doc.
But Diop makes a key distinction in her work from the outset by introducing a beguiling element of poetic fantasy, giving sentient consciousness and voices to the artifacts, starting with item #26, an imposing statue of King Ghezo. This directorial flourish liberates the looted treasures from being mere objects, with smart use of subjective camera by DP Joséphine Drouin-Viallard helping to make them come alive as characters.
In sonorous, curiously futuristic-sounding voiceovers in the Fon language spoken in Benin, the early 19th century ruler describes thousands of years of darkness in a foreign land after being uprooted like countless others from his place of origin. He expresses perplexed indignation after being labeled “26,” wondering why he’s not identified by name.
In Benin, the single-word banner newspaper headline, “Historique,” announces the importance of the objects’ return as they sit, still crated, in a temperature-controlled room waiting to be installed in the presidential palace and put on display to the public. Street celebrations and the arrival of local dignitaries for the unveiling highlight the cultural significance of the ancestral “homecoming.”
Words delivered in the low rumble of Ghezo’s voice suggest the disorientation of emerging from “the kingdom of night” into a place “far removed from the country I saw in my dreams.” Imaginative use of electronic music by Wally Badarou and Dean Blunt, who hail from Beninese and Nigerian roots, respectively, amplifies the mythical and spiritual aspects of travel across centuries.
With a fluidity of form and subject comparable to what Ava DuVernay achieves in Origin, Diop folds the poetic into the political, without ever becoming didactic. The film reflects on sensitive issues pertaining to the return of looted property and on the partial erasure of Dahomey’s history and language once schooling in French became the educational norm.
Eschewing talking heads in favor of animated discussion, the director shifts her attention to an assembly of students from the University of Abomey-Calavi, monitoring some fiercely divided views.
One young woman confesses that she wept for 20 minutes upon seeing the treasures displayed at the Palais, experiencing a surge of pride in the ingenuity and artistry of her ancestors. Another talks of being raised on Disney, her own country’s glorious history marginalized.
Some remain outraged that only 26 of an estimated 7,000 artifacts plundered by colonial invaders have been returned, raising questions of whether the repatriation represents progress or a token gesture. Skeptics point out that the country’s cultural heritage is still stuck in a pattern mapped out by their colonizers. On the other hand, there’s fiery urging from one woman not to focus on the insult but to be grateful for what’s been returned.
The students’ impassioned views on all this are inspiring, optimistically suggesting that future efforts in conservation and reparations are in capable hands. Hearing the artifacts described as “works that give strength, power and clarity to who we are and to our contribution to world patrimony” is an unexpectedly moving expression of cultural pride, without glossing over the challenging work still to be done.
Blurring the boundaries separating narrative from nonfiction filmmaking, Diop threads all this together with supple rhythms in Gabriel Gonzalez’s graceful editing and some evocative images from Drouin-Viallard.
The director gives the stirring closing words to Ghezo as the lights are turned off after-hours in the presidential palace and the king vows to walk again on the Atlantic “shores of the wound.” “I am the face of the metamorphosis,” his voice intones. “26 does not exist. Within me resonates infinity.”
Some may wonder about Diop’s choice to follow an international breakout that picked up a string of awards, starting with the Grand Prix in Cannes, with a 68-minute documentary. But they won’t be wondering after seeing this beautifully made, powerful and thematically complex work.
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