Maruge film wins praise in US

A feature film based on the story of an 84-year-old Kenyan’s quest for literacy opened on Friday in New York and Los Angeles to generally positive reviews.

The First Grader, shot in Kenya and starring a Kenyan actor, captures how Mzee Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge took advantage of the introduction of free primary education in 2003 to go to school.

The lead role is played by Oliver Litondo, who, the Los Angeles Times says, delivers “a lovely performance”.

Mr Litondo, in his first star turn, gives his character “a compelling dignity and determination,” the LA Times says, adding that director Justin Chadwick “makes the most of Litondo’s regal bearing and expressive face, creased by the years, often letting the camera linger there”.

British actress Naomie Harris, playing the role of school principal Jane Obinchu, also wins praise for an “exuberant” performance.

But “the scene stealers are Maruge’s young classmates — a mishmash of soulful eyes, cherubic smiles and mischief — all cast from a Rift Valley school in Kenya where the film was shot,” the Los Angeles Times review says.

The First Grader, which runs for 1 hour 43 minutes, is described by the LA Times’ critic as “a tearful, joyful, imperfect, yet nearly irresistible ode to the human spirit”.

The New York Times offers a more mixed appraisal of what it describes as “a richly textured glimpse of Kenya’s land and people”.

According to this assessment, the film “tries to honour both the uplifting aspects of Mr Maruge’s experience and its political and social complexities. This ambition — to provoke thought while tugging at heartstrings — makes The First Grader fascinating and frustrating in almost equal measure”.

“The most intriguing parts of The First Grader wrestle with a legacy of tribal conflict and political score-settling that has long outlasted the British,” the New York Times reviewer adds.

Due in part to its flashbacks to Mr Maruge’s involvement with Mau Mau, “the movie never quite figures out which story it wants to tell”, the review says.

The LA Times makes a similar point: “The filmmakers reduce a complicated history of tribal conflicts, British rule and Maruge’s experience to a shorthand of images that raise more questions than they answer.”

The film will be shown at cinemas throughout the US in coming weeks.

Mzee Maruge grabbed world headlines in 2004 when he arrived at Kapkenduiywo Primary School in Eldoret one morning to begin school at the age of 84.

After being displaced in the 2008 poll chaos, he joined a school in Kariobangi, Nairobi. He died of cancer in 2009 at the age of 89.