The For­got­ten Kingdom

Giv­en the scarci­ty of films set in Lesotho, it’s a shame to dis­miss this offer­ing from debut writer/​director Andrew Mudge. Were it not for the nov­el USP of its set­ting, The For­got­ten King­dom would be clas­si­fi­able as entire­ly unoriginal.

Arche­typ­al char­ac­ters heave arche­typ­al themes across rur­al ter­rain, seem­ing­ly as bewil­dered by the con­vo­lut­ed plot machi­na­tions as any audi­ence might be. There is respite in the glo­ri­ous land­scape, but the cam­era nev­er lingers any­where for long enough to locate its poet­ry. There is intrigue in the clash between prag­ma­tism and super­sti­tion but that theme nev­er becomes front and cen­tre. Mudge is too intent on bound­ing onto the next gra­tu­itous plot point.

Zen­zo Ngqobe seems to be the go-to guy for films set in South Africa (Lesotho is entire­ly encir­cled by SA). He has appeared in Blood Dia­mond, Tsot­si and more recent­ly Man­dela: Long Walk to Free­dom. The For­got­ten King­dom pro­vides the actor with a meaty lead role, and it doesn’t suit his flinty livewire dis­po­si­tion. His char­ac­ter, Atang, is a big city Joburg boy, who returns back to his birth­place, a moun­tain vil­lage, in order to bury his father.

After hag­gling over coffins, he recon­nects with an old school friend, Dineo (Nozipho Nkelem­ba) – a serene teacher with a sis­ter who is dying of AIDS and a father whose shame regard­ing the sick­ness stops him from doing right by his fam­i­ly. To car­ry on describ­ing the set-ups would be to write a very long list. The basic ques­tion is: where will Atang end up?

Mudge opts not to explore his cen­tral character’s inte­ri­or­i­ty, or to give any real sense of what life was like in Joburg for Atang, Instead, he uses utilis­es clunky plot expo­si­tion to deal out tough knocks, send him on a jour­ney and hand him a plucky orphan on a horse that con­stant­ly reap­pears because: ​“I am the eyes on the dark clouds fol­low­ing you around this coun­try.” The plucky orphan and his grave por­tents are absolute­ly the best thing on show. Lebo­hang Ntsane has a boom­ing life­force that belies his small stature.

With all of the sup­port char­ac­ters that Atang meet on his jour­ney, Mudge attempts to con­jure some­thing almost myth­i­cal about their natures, plac­ing exag­ger­at­ed focus on their gener­ic qual­i­ties as if to trans­form them from indi­vid­u­als into uni­ver­sal spir­its. In the case of the help­less wid­ow, the stub­born patri­arch, the vain suit­or and the sick sis­ter, he fails, cre­at­ing slight sketch­es of peo­ple whose pres­ence lends lit­tle to the atmos­phere of any giv­en scene.

But in the case of the plucky orphan, Ntsane’s com­mand­ing per­for­mance sum­mons the con­vic­tion of a child in sync with the cus­toms and beliefs of his world. That kid is a mar­vel and pro­vides a teas­er glimpse of the bulls­eye at which this film is aim­ing but does not hit.