(USA, 133 min.)
Written and directed by Cary Fukunaga
Starring: Abraham Attah, Idris Elba
However, the dramatic heft of Beasts of No Nation really demands the scope of a theatrical experience to do its subject justice. There are only a handful of films I’ve watched as an online screener or as a home video release and finished it thinking, “Damn, I wish I watched that on a big screen.” Beasts of No Nation is atop such a list. Rather than enjoying it at home on a decently sized screen with the sounds of gunshots and murder turned to a reasonable volume so as to avoid waking the cat, the film screams for the fully immersive sensations of a theatrical film experience to best replicate the hell that child soldier Agu (Abraham Attah) undergoes. Put another way, Beasts of No Nation reminds me why I cancelled by Netflix account last year: movies are better on the big screen.
This adaptation of the novel by Uzodinma Iweala finds the
right visual complement to the author’s lyrical style and it adopts every
instance of passive tense that graces Agu’s narrative. However, the film adopts the novel’s greatest
shortcoming too, which is the relentless use of passive tense. While it serves
a thematic purpose, the frequent reminders of the child’s passivity, rendered
in comments of “I am walking,” “I am running,” “I am fighting,” “I am
shooting,” etc. are just as cumbersome on screen as on the page. The
adaptation, awkward verbiage aside, also bloats the narrative of Iweala’s
beautifully brief book, for the film runs a full 135 minutes whereas the book
barely covers 135 pages. The script by Carey Fukunaga meanders and repeats
itself with a lack of focus. The book, on the other hand, is as pointed as a
bullet.
Fukunaga excels, however, in creating visual hell with
disorienting and chaotic cinematography that captures beauty and horror alike
in blood-spattered images of the anonymous African country in which Agu becomes
a soldier in the rebel army under duress following the murder of his family. Corpses
riddled the frame while lush elements of the natural landscape create
beautifully foreboding surroundings. Long takes are plentiful, which fans of
Fukunaga’s work on True Detective will
admire. Sweeping shots let colours flow with brutally vivid compositions of
life and death, like one memorable shot in which rain spatters the ground
following a ruthless slaughter and it looks as if blood rains from the sky. These
images all look nice on the small screen, but they’d look even better in their
full scope.
Beasts of No Nation creates
an elliptic, almost feverish form as Agu finds himself overwhelmed by the
horrors of the rebel army. The film never quite finds the same psychology that
Iweala creates in his prose, and the lethargic narrative prevents it from
achieving the same visceral and emotional pull as Kim Nguyen’s comparable War Witch does, but Fukunaga draws two
formidable performances from his stars. Beasts
of No Nation has a masterful hero/villain dynamic between Agu and the
fearsome Commandant (Idris Elba). Agu commands the screen with power and wisdom
beyond his years, while Elba completely submerses himself in the role of the
ruthless war criminal. Gruff and speaking with an accent that tells
Commandant’s lack of education and frequent intoxication, Elba is fierce and
intimidating. It’s hard to imagine that this actor so greatly embodied kindness
and goodwill of Nelson Mandela.
The film’s graphic violence offers a different kind of
horror, though, as the jarring brutality of the film is often too much to bear.
The soldiers’ use of machetes is bluntly gut-wrenching, especially the hack job
of Agu’s first kill that forces him to whack a man on the temple with a blunt
blade. The film cuts with the horrific nature of the deeds burdened upon the
child soldiers. On the other hand, Fukunaga sometimes appropriates the violence
as shock value or visual poetry. Take the aforementioned shot of the
sanguineous precipitation, which is as feels as inappropriate as it does evocative.
Rather than feel repulsed or moved to action, one often feels conflicted by the
film’s inconsistency.
Political films are a hallmark of the Netflix originals, though,
with films like The Square offering
film equals to Netflix’s original programming like House of Cards. The streamer remains best for documentaries on the
film front, as Netflix’s own What Happened, Miss Simone? remains one of the best films of the year and does
its subject justice on the small screen because Liz Garbus finds an intimate
form that translates well to home viewing. Netflix excels with original features
on the documentary front, so here’s hoping that their next dramatic venture
doesn’t leave one running for the theatres.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Beasts of No Nation is streaming on Netflix.
