THE FIRST GRADER (Justin Chadwick). 103 minutes. Opens Friday (May 20). See listing. Rating: NN
The First Grader was the runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, suggesting P.T. Barnum’s apocryphal dictum is as valid now as it was a century ago: if you shoot your Inspiring True Story from low angles in a glowing bronze light, people will applaud. It’s Pavlovian.
Based on the story of Kenyan Kimani N’gan’ga Maruge, a former Mau Mau rebel who attended a children’s school at the age of 84 in order to learn to read and write, it’s an obvious triumph-of-the-spirit drama, told in the most banal manner imaginable.
Oliver Litondo’s bruised dignity as the traumatized Maruge and Naomie Harris’s empathetic turn as the schoolteacher who fights to include him give those characters a bit more flesh than the noble ciphers director Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) has in mind.
The First Grader feels like it fell through a wormhole from 1986, when movies like The Color Purple and Cry Freedom imposed a condescending colonial perspective on Africa. Then, filmmakers hadn’t learned that they didn’t need to pander now a new generation thinks it’s the way to win awards.
