The Kitchen Toto

This is an exquisitely filmed little drama that deserves a much wider audience than it's likely to receive. Set in Kenya, in 1950, the story revolves around the trials and tribulations of Mwangi (Edwin Mahinda), a young black whose father is murdered by other blacks when he refuses to take the Thengi oath-a call to kill the white suppressors. Needing work, the youth takes a job with the district police chief (Bob Peck) as a kitchen "toto" or helper. A move which puts young Mwangi smack dab between the colonialists and the Mau Maus who want independence. The splitting of loyalty governs the plot, but it is the superb acting of the two young boys, Mahinda and Ronald Pirie, as the pug-nosed air gun-wielding Edward, son of the police chief, that steals the show. Pirie is almost laughable in his smug role of superiority to Mahinda, a role which breakdown in times of trouble or intense scientific investigation (as when the boys cut open a snake to see what it's had for dinner). But, in the end, it is tragedy that the film's about, and tragedy that it rolls implacably towards, as the Mau Maus attack the police chief's colonial empire in miniature with devastating results. Writer and director Harry Hooks picked up an award for directing at the Tokyo Film Festival. Recommended.