Beasts of No Nation: A Searing, Effective Child Soldier Drama

Watching through some of the Criterion Collection, a video distribution company known for restoring and distributing both classic and contemporary films it deems to be important, I found an interesting little Netflix Original called Beasts of No Nation, and now that I've seen it, I want to talk about it, because this film really struck a chord with me. It's probably no secret or surprise to you that Africa isn't exactly the most peaceful continent on Planet Earth, and sadly, that's something of a massive understatement. Africa has been rocked by corrupt governments, civil wars, and violent paramilitary groups of various stripes for a long time now, not unlike what we've come to expect from the Middle East, and there's really no end to the cycle of violence in sight. I can easily see why someone wouldn't want to touch subject matter such as this with a nine-foot pole, but I respect director Cary Joji Fukunaga, the director of the more well-known No Time To Die, and the cast and crew of Beasts of No Nation for not shying away from potential infamy, as well as treating the all-too-familiar situation portrayed here with a sense of reverence and respect that prevents the film from ever feeling exploitative. I really liked Beasts of No Nation, and while it's not quite perfect, and can be a difficult watch at points, it's an effective, eye-opening, and sobering portrait of life as a child soldier, not to mention a well-plotted and intentional film that knows exactly what it wants to be, and exactly how it wants to act.

Set in an unnamed African country, Beasts of No Nation follows a boy named Agu, who only recently survived the massacre of his family, as he gets caught up in a majority-child-soldier militia led by a flamboyant man known only as "Commandant."

The first thing I like about Beasts of No Nation is that it does something that a lot of movies made today neglect to do: it takes time at the start of the film to establish little details about its characters, focus on their normal and everyday lives, and give us windows into who they really are as people. The film isn't in any rush to get to pulse-pounding action sequences, and it's content to just sit for a little while and make us understand how each character in the film is different and distinct from each other, even in the ways they go about their everyday lives. Its portrayal of Agu and his family is very effective, and most striking when it comes to Agu's relationship with his grandfather, who is old and senile. As Agu puts it, "The lights are on, but nobody's home." Now, I didn't like everything about the first act of the film, which contains what is likely the film's biggest flaw: its inciting incident. There's a really rough transition between the balanced family life we see at the start of the film and the descent into chaos, and this leads to some less-than-desirable and very rushed pacing at the start of the movie. But to be honest with you, despite this rocky departure, it's mostly smooth sailing from here on out from a writing perspective. As far as characterization goes, Agu is a character who's easy to get behind, and yeah, while he's not especially daring or innovative when it comes to his writing, that writing is really effective, and raises a lot of interesting and striking moments in the film. Once he crosses paths with the ruthless Commandant, portrayed by Idris Elba, the film kicks into high gear and gets to what it really set out to do, and that is to show us the life of a child soldier. It's heavy stuff, and an intriguing and disturbing insight into how a vulnerable child can be conditioned to kill, and how their childhood is gradually eroded by older men trying to change them.

This duality of Agu is probably my favorite thing about Beasts of No Nation. The battle between old Agu, the child, and new Agu, the killer, isn't revolutionary, but once again, the filmmakers know what they're doing, and so this duality is very effectively portrayed. It's incredibly jarring seeing child soldiers mercilessly kill in one scene, and then go play with each other in the very next one. The way these children are exploited by adults in the film is just heartbreaking, and the film doesn't often water down its portrayal of the inherent evil of taking away an impressionable child's innocence, and how exposure to such violence at such a young age can make one grow old before their time. The film pulls Agu back and forth through different types of conditioning and reconditioning and creates a conflict between the demands of the world on Agu's actions, and the demands of Agu's conscience on how he views them. Also, the film deepens the conflict by putting the Commandant on bad terms with his own superiors, pulling Agu's loyalties in even more opposing directions, and creating yet more interesting commentary on loyalty to your immediate and personal leaders versus loyalty to higher and impersonal authority. Now, I'm usually not too wowed by mere ideas in a film, but tying your ideas to an immediately tangible character is a good way to ground them, and Beasts of No Nation never lets its ideas override any semblance of a plot. Also, the film is just really eye-opening to the reality of a lot of the violence that is happening right now in Africa, and yet it never really feels exploitative in any way. Agu is pulled in many different directions to many different senses of loyalty and responsibility, and the meaninglessness of this conflict is always a pretty pervasive centerpiece of this movie.

All things considered, I can confidently say that I loved Beasts of No Nation. It was a searing portrait of life as a child soldier and the difficulties of being reconditioned, whether from a child into a soldier or back into the role of a child. The plot and characters are both largely wins, minus some brief rough pacing towards the beginning, and the execution of the basics is expertly carried out by all involved. There are even occasional strokes of creative genius to be found here, and this was a refreshing thing to see, even as the film's relatively small $6 million budget sometimes peeks through the cracks in ways that did take me out of the experience a little bit. It's hard not to feel empathy for Agu as a character, and the film takes full advantage of this, giving us an effective portrayal of the life of a child soldier, a truly inhumane idea, and it never feels exploitative either, always sticking to a really matter-of-fact and personal approach, far more concerned with portraying the effects of violence on the young mind than it is with creating action-packed setpieces. Of course, being a realistic film about a conflict in a nation that might as well be real, Beasts of No Nation does have a decent amount of mature elements, namely some graphic violence, one very brief rape (no nudity), one off-screen sexual favor for an adult by a child, and sporadic strong language. This film can be hard to watch at times, but it tells an important story as old as time itself, one of the strong preying on the weak for their own gain. And as long as these so-called beasts lack a nation to call their own, I don't think this sobering paradigm is going anywhere anytime soon.

Beasts of No Nation - 9/10

Matthew 18:2-4