Is Love is War a Masterpiece?

By Oparah Goodness.

Love is a War is a comedy-drama because of how it turns out to end happily after all swings the couple experienced in their marriage. The political swings seemed to have tested their love and endurance elastics and even strengthened it. The Movie was a joint production between Chinaza Onuzo’s inkblot productions and Omoni Oboli’s Dioni Visions Entertainment and production kicked off on May 2019.
The movie was first premiered in September 22, 2019 at the Film house cinema Lekki, Lagos and released on September 27.

According to Omoni on Instagram, lots of hardwork, blood and sacrifices went into the film project. The movie is said to be a high budget movie. And anyone can agree she wasn’t lieing when she said that, this film is original and has good quality ranging from good picture quality to the audio and sound synchronization. Lighting was on fleek especially in the night scenes, the light was just giving life and energy to all the shots the DOP fired, the use of amazing and creative shots was incredible especially the scene were Hankuri Philips walks out on Senator Akenrele for choosing to leave her run the elections alone without the Abuja connections she had. All the time they were talking, I never knew the camera was focused on their reflection in the mirror, it was when Hankuri walks out, the Camera pans away from the mirror to Senator Akenrele’s face.

Need I talk about the artist elements? The spectacle of every scene was beautiful, the choice of locations was top notch selection by the location manager. The campaign organizations used in the film were very beautiful and they looked like real campaign offices. The strategy rooms were well proped by the property managers, with all the data on the walls and paper stickers etc.

Strategy rooms in the campaign offices.
Omoni Oboli’s costumes were all on point, I was always looking forward to see new costumes and my best costume was the one she wore on the debate day. Please you need to see this movie if you love fashion! Hankuri Philips was just a live fashion catalogue!

My best Hankuri Philips outfit.
Casting for me wasn’t bad, Only that Omoni Oboli didn’t really give me the fitting grace I wanted from a person running for Governor, I wished there was a switch of characters between Shaffy and Omoni where Shaffy Bello was the Governorship candidate while Omoni was the Chieftan instead. Shaffy Bello seemed to have better fitting grace for the Hankuri Philip’s role because of her body build and Omoni would have looked better as the Chieftan.  But it is what it is and we still got the message of the whole story, besides, Omoni’s embodiment of character was 70% and it’s still an A. The characters killed their roles, especially RMD as Dimeji Phillips, directing wouldn’t be too tasky for Omoni Oboli as most of her actor’s were good at what they did, the only tasking part would be the crowd scenes which would demand you handling lots of human beings who may want to do things against your own plans and directives.

Editing was handled by a woman and it’s impressive! You handled your work well by arranging all the shots and making this Netflix worthy movie! But, next time you have to pay attention to typos, there’s a typo in the crew list which indicated Chinaza Onuzo as the writer. No one is perfect tho. The change of locations were not so clear, I don’t know whose fault it is, it’s a gray area so I’m not blaming anyone in particular, so just take note and make something better next time. There was no way showing a few seconds film of an airport and an establishment shot of a roundabout could have told me that the Philips have migrated from Lagos to Ondo stateU for elections. Understanding the change in locations would have been made simple if the editor indicated Ondo state on the screen after the airport scene, and I would have preferred to see a plane landing on the run way, to better understand there is a change of location than few seconds scene of a static Peace airplane in the airport. All I’m saying is you should have given us more details on the location changes.

The Philips
If you are yet to see the movie, I’ll endorse you should carry on, no shaking!! I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the political ignition it’s giving to every woman and the men too. The fact the movie explores and combines the political world with the family sphere makes the movie one of a kind in Nollywood. And mind you this movie has a message for everyone in the audience, my experience from the movie can’t be the same as yours. I experienced what is called ‘purgation of emotions’ by Aristotle. Apart from that, the doubts in my heart has been cleared, at least few people like Omoni understand my kind of feminism. (See my previous post to understand what I meant). This movie is not only entertaining and didatic but full of suspense and family drama that can be relatable and applicable for a healthy family relationship and what have you. Have you seen the movie? Tell us your rating and why?

Movie rating: 80%

Stay Safe and see you next time on our blog!