environment,” explains Amoo. “The idea of
one merging into the other really stuck. This
metamorphosis is happening right in front of
your eyes.”
STAGGERING ACHIEVEMENT
This older version of Femi flirts for a while
with a life of crime, getting involved with
a local gang leader. Eventually, though,
he rejects that lifestyle, for which he’s
unceremoniously headbutted in the face
as a parting gift. As Femi stumbles, dazed
and confused, down the road, Amoo locks
the camera on Adewunmi’s face, conveying
disorientation as well as anyone since Scorsese
did much the same with Harvey Keitel in
Mean Streets. “We were figuring out with
the fight coordinator what that would feel like,”
says Amoo. “It’s tied to trying to create an
immersive experience, and keep it in his
perspective. That felt like the most visceral way
of doing it. I’ve been punched in the face, but
not headbutted. But it came from trying to
get you to feel it.”
THE LAGOS MOVIE
The film’s final act sees Femi and Yinka travel
to Lagos. “We were there for a week,” says
Amoo. “Sam, who’s Nigerian Yoruba like me,
that was his first time in Nigeria. What Femi’s
experiencing there, Sam’s really experiencing
that.” Amoo wanted to show a different side
of the Nigerian capital than had perhaps
been presented before. “We absorbed the
experience of Lagos. The weather wasn’t great,
but that was subversive in itself. So we start
off in the golden plains of Lincolnshire, and
when you get to Africa, it’s like the reverse.
It felt like we got underneath the hood of
stereotypical African imagery.”MEET THE PARENTS
Eventually, it’s revealed why Femi and Yinka
are there: to meet Femi’s dad, who left them
when he was young, and who has built
a successful life for himself as a pastor in
Lagos. The meeting, which also includes
half-siblings that Femi never knew about,
is awkward and stilted, but culminates inhim finally connecting with his mother. “One
of the key germs from that meeting is how
it eludicates his understanding of his mother
and her context,” says Amoo. “He now
understands what she was working up against.
The way he hugs his mother, which is one
of the first times you see that, that tells
you everything.”FULL CIRCLE
“It’s the coalescence of all these identities on
that beach,” says Femi of the film’s final scene,
which finds Femi on a beach in Lagos, and
overtly links this older, wiser model with his
younger, wolfpack self. “It’s kind of 360 degrees
to bring him back to such a natural environment,
in his motherland. He now has the freedom
to roam and run as he did as a kid. That wraps
up his Lincolnshire identity, his London identity
and his Nigerian identity in one bubble.”
CHRIS HEWITTTHE LAST TREEIS OUT NOW ON DVD, BLU-RAY
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