There's a moment early on where Shula's father asks her to send taxi money before he'll come to the scene of a dead body. The man lies in the road while his brother-in-law demands a wire transfer before he can help him. The financial system of the family became visible to me during my calculation work. Who owes whom, and for what?
The entire film operates at this level throughout its runtime even when it appears to focus on traumatic events and ritual practices and moments of resolution. The deceased uncle Fred proved to be a predator. Everyone knew. The film is interested in why knowing wasn't enough, and the answer has less to do with psychology than with the way families function as small economies. Resources flow. Debts accumulate. The absence of sound transforms into a valuable resource which people can use.
Susan Chardy plays Shula with an almost unsettling stillness. She's come home to Zambia after time away, and she finds Fred's body while driving back from a costume party, still wearing an inflatable suit and mirrored mask. The image is absurd and perfect. She appears to have come from a different world which actually turned out to be true. The death rituals which extend beyond mourning treat her as someone who belongs to both the inside and outside world. She needs to deliver food to the male guests who are seated outside in their lawn chairs. Specific orders, like a restaurant. One wants tea. Another wants something else. She needs to locate her missing cousin while two intruders continue to enter the premises.
The widow stayed in my thoughts from the beginning until the end of the entire period.
Fred's much younger wife gets blamed for his death because she didn't cook for him properly, so he wandered. The system maintains a self-perpetuating system which generates continuous damage to itself. She inherits only the ongoing public interest which follows her throughout her life. "The widow is crying like a mosquito," one of the patriarchs sneers. The line functions to turn her grieving into a theatrical display yet it reveals her family's financial situation because she has become a costly burden instead of a valuable possession.
The film shows mourning through Nyoni's purposeful storytelling approach which unfolds at a slow pace. The first twenty minutes of the movie require you to maintain your endurance. Shula remains frozen in her car while Nsansa her unstable cousin strikes the windows with his hands. The story moves at a slow rate but it stretches out its length through what seems like both intentional and unnecessary prolongation. Still, it pays off. The women's conversations accumulate. Fred performs actions which become visible to me before they disappear from my mind. Nobody wants to make waves. "All those years everything going on with me. Shula showed her family her experience but she had not told them because she wanted to stop them from getting upset. The price of revealing my thoughts exceeded what it would have cost to maintain silence about my thoughts.
The guinea fowl of the title comes from a children's programme Shula remembers. The bird serves as a warning system which alerts the farm about approaching predators. It makes noise. The metaphor is obvious, maybe too obvious, but Nyoni doesn't belabour it. She places this image next to the dreamlike scenes and the flooded areas and the younger Shula who appears as a spectral representation of previous harm.
The cinematographer David Gallego who worked on Nyoni's directorial debut uses his camera to show beauty without adding any fake elements to the images. The aunties crawling into the house of mourning. The red dresses of the matriarchs against drab interiors. The everyday clothes that look worn in the right places. The area shows no signs of poverty tourism because it presents only its natural textures.
The story ended with a disturbing section which interrupted my expectation of continued plot development. The film shows the driver making braking or acceleration decisions but the entire process appears to be cut short. The audience accepts that Nyoni built her evidence properly before she decided to show it without adding a concluding statement. The main objective of this situation seems to fulfill its designated purpose.
The system operates continuously after it completes its last decision. The machines continue operating continuously until someone blocks their path to obtain food.
The team depends on Chardy to deliver their best results. She keeps her face still but you can read all her emotions through her expression. Years of keeping accounts. The family faces an endless cycle of debt because they understand both their current financial situation and their inability to make any progress on their outstanding debts.
