Movie Review: Ingoma
One-liner: While well-meaning, this uneven coming-of-age crime melodrama is preachy, misguided and underdeveloped.
Ingoma (Song) is a coming-of-age drama from Kagiso Modupe (Thando) about a young man who reaches an intersection in his life where he must aim higher and rise above his situation. Told by way of a flashback, this story comes from the mouth of a schoolteacher who relays his trials and tribulations to a rapt group of impressionable students. Not convinced the successful man grew up in their impoverished neighbourhood, they listen with trepidation as the man’s rags-to-riches story builds to a major turning point.
The documentary Rise: The Siya Kolisi Story has given Kolisi even more traction after the biography detailed his incredible true story. Growing up in a family with very limited resources, he managed to secure a life-changing scholarship to Grey High School where his rugby career kicked off. Full of potential, he reached a provincial level before the talent earned his way into the Stormers and Springboks. Crowned as the captain of the winning Rugby World Cup team in 2019, his success story went international, making him a popular public figure beyond the point of rugby in South Africa.
Ingoma takes inspiration from Kolisi’s life story in crafting its narrative and lead character, Themba Tshabalala. While there are a few tweaks here and there to give it a fresh spin, it’s familiar enough to draw this comparison with a direct reference to Siya Kolisi. While Themba flourishes as a high school rugby player at a boarding school, he endures the hardships of his home life… his father deceased, brother imprisoned and his mother prostituting herself in order to get by. Struggling to make ends meet, Themba gets involved with the wrong “friends”, becoming a drug-peddling criminal.
While Ingoma has some great ideas in its social issue commentary and tale of manhood redefined, it’s ultimately undercooked and overambitious. Starting with a pixelated title logo, you get the sense that it was rushed, financially constrained to breaking point or simply ran out of budget. Not investing enough time in the script, it’s overwritten… weighed down by monologues, overlong scenes with platitudes there to add substance. While Ingoma has its heart in the right place with a message geared towards community, social change and upliftment, its drawn out speeches and overly preachy style make it a slog at times.
“These tears are real.”
The story elements around Themba’s family and circumstances connect the character with the hard realities of township life, making a strong contrast with his prestigious school life and peers – mirroring many of Kolisi’s struggles. The flashback concept gives additional dramatic license in the story coming from a storyteller who wants to give back. However, Ingoma regularly dips into melodrama as overwrought scenes try to ratchet up emotion, often met with unintentional humour, as exemplified by trying to argue with his mother over her professional choices, losing his girlfriend to his flashy “friend” and a strangely casual hostage scenario.
Having a screenplay that grapples with a character going through hell, it’s good to have Mpho Sebeng there to navigate this varied emotional terrain. Immensely watchable, he offers a sense of continuity and helps steady the production even when it swerves into stage production type situational drama. A broad ensemble, the level of performance varies significantly, a mixed bag when it comes to acting in spite of fielding acting veterans of Sello Maake Ka-Ncube’s calibre. Introduced to a charming and spirited hood, played by Kagiso Modupe himself, Ingoma does enough to warrant a promising buddy movie spin-off but this diversion is short-lived – instead serving as a springboard into Themba’s troubles as a drug dealer.
This rags-to-riches tale has appeal, trying to harness its cinematography to be cool, only to switch to a stage production shooting style in the third act. From an oversized reporter’s mic and improv swat team to a ready-and-waiting minister, Ingoma struggles with consistency and its world-building swaying between kitchen sink realism and fable. Distracting choices break the suspense of disbelief and urgency of realism, forcing the drama into many awkward moments as the stop-start pacing threatens to derail the story completely.
The heavy-handed direction, iffy level of acting, see-sawing melodrama, pacing issues, preachy dialogue and budgetary constraints ultimately overwhelm this well-meaning yet ham-fisted feature film. While Ingoma’s earnest and even noble, it’s undone by a series of missteps that undermine the film, scraping through to a supremely shakey third act through many moments of unintentional comedy. Ambitious beyond its means or going to production several drafts too soon, Ingoma is laden with unrealised potential, squandering many of its fine ingredients.
The bottom line: Slapdash
