Objects have lives. We invest them with meaning, pouring parts of ourselves into inanimate things so that their significance takes on greater and yet more deeply intimate importance in our lives and our psychology. “We must not forget that an object is the best messenger of a world beyond nature,” wrote Roland Barthes, “one can easily see in an object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is far more magical than life), and in a word a silence which belongs to the realm of fables.” Whether Mati Diop was familiar with that quote or not, her documentary Dahomey vividly brings Barthes’ ideas to life as she follows the journey of 26 restituted cultural artefacts from their exile in Paris’ musée du quai Branly back to their nation of origin in Benin. With her characteristic melding of the cerebral and poetic, Diop challenges her audience to explore such weighted topics as colonialization, cultural responsibility and the meaning of heritage in a world often struggling to just get by.
Divided into sections, from the packing up of the treasures to their journey, then on to their celebratory welcome and installation followed by a lively university debate, the film is a compact, perceptive think-piece whose one misstep – to this critic’s ears – is the computer-generated hollow metallic voice given to the statues, which turns them into slightly ridiculous sci-fi villains rather than the souls of once worshiped objects grappling with the experience of exile and return. Setting this cavil aside, Dahomey is the kind of visually striking creative documentary from a rising art house star that should easily find global distribution despite its 67-minute length.
In November 2021, after years of negotiations, 26 objects from Benin, formerly Dahomey, were returned to the nation from which they’d been plundered by French troops in the 1890s. Diop doesn’t follow the endless negotiations preceding the restitution, nor does she cover the French curators’ examination of the wood and bronze objects in readiness for their departure: it begins with their being crated up, the camera and mic seemingly placed within the box alongside the bochio statue of King Ghezo as the lid is power-screwed down (the sound design is especially evocative). Rightfully accompanying them on their journey is the Beninois historian Calixte Biah, movingly overseeing their departure.
Once the plane touches down in Cotonou, the crates are rapturously fêted by people lining the streets before ultimately entering the Palais de la Marina for exhibition. Though widely covered in international news at the time, the arrival and display of these treasures still delivers an emotional punch, becoming a stirring celebration of the return of war booty whose spiritual, historic and artistic heritage for the nation has increased through their 130-year exile. What takes Dahomey to another level beyond celebration is what comes next, when Diop organized a public forum with students at the University of Abomey-Calavi to discuss the meaning of restitution and the role these objects have in contemporary Beninois society.
The students understandably have a lot to unpack, and Diop allows it to play out – beautifully edited down, of course – without privileging any point of view. A major part of the discussion is the estimated 7,000 objects still remaining abroad, and many express anger that they’ve not also been returned. The legacy of colonization, the rape of the country and the current political climate are all debated alongside considerations of the active religious/spiritual significance the objects have now that they’re back on native soil. No doubt there was a tremendous amount of footage for Diop and editor Gabriel Gonzalez to weigh up, and they’ve chosen judiciously, though one can imagine a Blu-ray extra in which the full debate is allowed to play out.
Wisely, Diop chooses not to directly wade into the broader debate on restitution and the hotly contested topic of what does and does not belong in the museums of colonizing countries. At the film’s start there’s a shot of the giant Olmec head in the atrium of the musée du quai Branly but this is the sole moment where the larger question is silently acknowledged, and Diop also doesn’t mention other museums who’ve recently returned priceless examples of Benin bronzes to Nigeria. Dahomey is more focused than that and all the richer for it, allowing Benin’s youth to take control of the conversation with all their emotions and the (at times) limited perspectives of university students the world over. In a country still wrestling with the insidious poison of colonialism and finally able to assert ownership over their cultural wealth, with all the concomitant pride attached, it’s up to this generation to decide what inner lives these objects still have, and how to re-integrate them into the soul of a nation.
Director: Mati Diop
Written by: Mati Diop, with Makenzy Orcel
With: Calixte Biah, Alain Godonou, Abdoulaye Imorou, Paul Timothée Doto, Jules Bocco, Richard J.V. Sogan, Didier Donatien Alihonou
Producers: Eve Robin, Judith Lou Levy, Mati Diop
Cinematography: Joséphine Drouin Viallard
Editing: Gabriel Gonzalez
Music: Dean Blunt, Wally Badarou
Sound: Corneille Houssou, Nicolas Becker, Cyril Holtz
Production companies: Les Films du Bal (France), Fanta Sy (Senegal), Arte France Cinéma (France), in association with Saturday Films
World sales: Les Films du Losange
Venue: Berlinale (International competition)
In French, Fon, English
67 minutes
