Beasts of No Nation
Director: Cary Joji
Fukunaga
Writer: Cary Joji
Fukunaga
Starring: Abraham
Attah, Idris Elba, Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye
Rating: Three and a
half stars out of five
Available on
Netflix and in limited release now.
Cary Joji Fukunaga
is a budding filmmaking master. Through two excellent features,
2009's Sin Nombre and 2011's Jane Eyre, and his work
helming every episode of True Detective's first season,
Fukunaga has displayed a calm, measured, color-saturated coldness that
nonetheless had humanity flowing through his veins.
But Fukunaga is
still in the process of budding, rather than having fully flowered.
His latest feature, Beasts of No Nation, which is Netflix's
first foray into producing original films, has all the signposts of
Fukunaga's style to date. It deals in the murky, often miserable world of
those who abuse power. Its colors, particularly the greens of the
African bush, pop with a heightened quality that suggests something
just to the left of reality in order to help the viewer reach understanding with the subject on a metaphorical level. It displays the traumatic nature of
growing up. It has the camaraderie that grows between those most
stuck in the middle of existential horror. It has, in Idris Elba's
performance as the calculated, cynical Commandant, the seductive
charisma that leads one to become powerful. Most dazzlingly, it deploys several
long, uninterrupted takes with a camera following its characters
through myriad nightmare-scapes of a country deep in the throes of
civil war.
Everything in the
preceding paragraph is borderline extraordinary use of the cinematic
medium. It is harrowing, it is beautiful, heart-wrenching,
awe-inducing stuff. For long stretches, Beasts of No Nation works
on all those levels, creating moments of deep understanding and the
kind of empathy that clenches your stomach and fists with profound
anger at the injustice of it all.
But there are at
least three flaws, mostly structural, that keep Beasts of No
Nation from achieving its full potential.
Early in the film,
we get an extended look at the small-town life for Agu (Abraham Attah) and
his family, especially his relationships with his father and older
brother. Theirs is a stressed-out, striving family, but a
recognizable one in that they appreciate the time spent with each
other, whether it's by burping up a storm at the dinner table or
hawking “imagination TVs” (the frame of a television without a
screen) to the military “peacekeeping” forces at the edge of
town. There are silly, teasing insults tossed between the brothers
and an exasperated, “Why can't you listen to what I'm trying to
tell you?” quality to the father, who still can't help but smile at
his ragamuffin children. Agu's mother and little sister are largely
window dressing for these moments, but when it comes time to put the
film's plot in motion, Fukunaga enlists them as the emotional
drivers. Agu spends so little time with the female members of his
family that their eventual separation when the peace in their town
breaks down is not as strong as it can be. We are left to fill in the
blanks as the music swells. We know a boy being forcibly removed from
his mother's care is a horrible thing, but the movie could stand to
build that relationship before it goes for the surface-level
obviousness – it's clearly possible given the rich kinship shown
between Agu and his male family.
Despite slightly
dropping the ball on the Agu-mother relationship, Fukunaga still
nails its payoff later in the film, during one of the aforementioned
long takes. Agu, now a boy soldier in the Commandant's battalion,
goes with his fellow troops to storm a building. Inside they find a
woman and young girl hiding from the gunshots. With his mind clouded
by trauma and brainwashing, Agu mistakes the woman for his mother.
What follows is emotional devastation provoked by the callousness of
war in a way rarely encountered in film. It is largely a sympathy
built in the moment and directed at the two innocents the viewer does
not know, their plight an assault on human decency. And yet, if the
buildup of Agu's relationship with his mother had been handled more
deftly at the outset, this moment would have been an all-timer of
cinematic tragedy – it's almost there anyway, but for different
reasons than are perhaps intended.
The next flaw is in
how Fukunaga handles the climax of the picture. Elba's Commandant,
who spends the film as a monster who nonetheless is totally
understandable as the type who can garner a huge following, is at the
end of his rope, boxed in by circumstance, made impotent and
irrelevant by the decisions of those above his pay grade – we all
answer to somebody, even if we disagree with their decisions, he
wisely tells Agu. The Englishman Elba has learned a thing or two from
his time in America and the football culture we have, as he fires up
the troops like an adrenaline- (or something else-) fueled linebacker
leading the team onto the field at the Super Bowl. He does this while
twisting their minds in the downtime between battles with promises of
glory, freedom, and humorous tales of women's desire for them – before abusing them irreparably in quiet,
blood-stained offices he commandeers along the warpath. He deserves every comeuppance
he can get. But the way things come to a head is handled in a
presentational way, with the camera largely stationary and removed from the emotional heat of the moment. There is not
enough time given to the Commandant, Agu, the other soldiers, and particularly
not the audience, to truly twist in the wind of suspense at this
moment. The tension that should be here is replaced by an exhausted
resignation, a desire to end a horrifying journey -- and it is over in a hurry when it could, and arguably should, keep twisting the screws for longer. On one hand, this
could be a movie zigging when it is expected to zag, and that is the
correct instinct for this instance. However, the way that zigging is
explored could still stand to ratchet up the tension several notches.
And finally, Beasts
of No Nation ends in a ragged way. There is an epilogue attached
that goes on for several minutes, a short story in itself. It
acknowledges the damage done to Agu, the things he was forced to do,
the things he will never be able to escape, but within the context of
the movie, they are too pat. No, Agu will never be “okay” in the
sense that a comfortable American will be, but it is not in the
spirit of the rest of the film to show him in a place of physical safety.
Particularly not after Fukunaga gives himself a perfect,
semi-safe-yet-still-open ending right before the epilogue kicks in.
All of this makes
Beasts of No Nation sound like a mess and a failure, when it
is anything but. It is perhaps more fascinating in an intellectual
sense because of its flaws, even if its emotional resonance – which it
still carries in spades for much of its runtime – can sometimes be
less than perfect. Fukunaga, who also wrote, produced, and did his
own cinematography in this project of true auteurism, may benefit
from a few more collaborative voices on his next film. No matter
what, he is one of American film's most essential voices working
today. If Beasts of No Nation is his growing pains movie, the
future will be phenomenal.
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