by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
“How does our Two Cents look today?” “Alright!”
Netflix doesn’t dip its toe into original programming and see how it goes. No, when the streaming service decides they want in on television and movies, they put down a whole bunch of money to garner a whole bunch of prestige and start swinging for fences.
And so we have the company’s first feature film, Beasts of No Nation. Based on a novel of the same name, the film was written and directed by Cary Fukunaga, famed for his work on True Detective. Fukunaga’s eye brings vibrant life to the story of a carefree young boy (Abraham Attah) in West Africa whose life is upended by civil war. Left with no family and no home, the boy falls under the sway of The Commandant (Idris Elba) and pressed into service as a child soldier in a guerrilla army.
Things go bad. And then they get worse. Child-soldiering, it turns out, is not the most pleasant of career choices.
Beasts has already drawn praise from our esteemed fellows here at Cinapse, with reviews from both Ed Travis and Alex Williams. We decided to open it up to the whole team and see what people thought. Find out below!
Next Week’s Pick:
In as hard as a left turn as is humanly possible from this film, next week the team will serve up some fun with Stephen Chow’s The God of Cookery. The film, currently available to stream on Netflix, brings Chow’s trademark slapstick absurdism to the world of celebrity chefs, promising the sort of madcap mania that has kept Chow one of the most consistently delightful cinematic entertainers for decades.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
The Team
Alex:Beasts of No Nation is a fascinating example of a film undone by the things that make it exceptional, and Fukunaga’s unflinching depiction of his subject matter is both nightmarishly effective and overwhelming. However, the phenomenal duet between Idris Elba and Abraham Attah is strong enough that the film remains compelling even at its most grueling. Though the film ultimately falls short in a few key ways, the undeniable power of its filmmaking and performances make it a boldly exceptional misfire.
Read Alex’s Full Review (@AlexWilliamsdt)
Ed:Beasts Of No Nation is a masterful film; assured, confident, artful. The performances, the screenplay, the cinematography, the small touches from sound design, to minimalist score, to costuming… all these details come together powerfully to engross and engage the viewer. But perhaps more powerfully, without preaching or melodrama, Beasts Of No Nation makes you want to stand up against war and get serious about making what little difference you can make as an individual to put an end to the most soul-stealing blight in all of human history. It is the rare war film indeed that has the power to take you to that place.
Read Ed’s Full Review (@Ed_Travis)
Frank:Beasts of No Nation has to be one of the toughest films I’ve ever experienced. The sheer horror of young boys watching their families slain, only to be immediately forced to become the coldest of soldiers has never played out on screen in such a way as it is here. The magnitude of the heinous acts these boys must commit to avoid facing death is put on full display, holding nothing back.
The film is made even more powerful by two of the best performances of the year. Idris Elba goes to levels he’s never gone before to bring to life a character who is part monster/part father, and Abraham Attah gives one of the most accomplished cinematic turns ever performed by a young actor. The many times he is forced to act and grow up in an instant, read all over his face in a devastating way.
The film has a striking beauty to it. With writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga also taking on DP duties, the film has a rich 70s rawness, which highlights the film’s colors and exotic scenery.
Beasts of No Nation easily earns a place as one of the most rewarding films of the year.
(@frankfilmgeek)
James:Netflix sets their bar high with their first original release Beasts of No Nation. Set in an unnamed African country embroiled in civil war, this harrowing cross between war flick and horrific rites-of-passage tale sees young Agu (Abraham Atta) escape the massacre of his family only to fall into the charismatic clutches of rebel militia leader Commandant (Idris Elba) and forced to become one of his child soldiers.
Writer/director Cary Fukanaga gives us an unflinching portrayal of innocence lost then utterly destroyed. There’s a gritty authenticity and immediacy to Agu’s experiences as he both witnesses and participates in atrocity after atrocity, fuelled by drugs and the Commandant’s misguided rhetoric. Yet the film lets you judge the moral implications inherent in a brutal, merciless world completely alien to most of us.
Although Idris Elba makes the most of the (im)morally complex, father-like Commandant, it is Atta’s astonishing performance of understated maturity that absolutely slayed me.
Like Schindler’s List and 12 Years A Slave, Beasts of No Nation is ‘Important Cinema’. An emotionally devastating true-life horror story that needs to be told as it’s a depressing reality for thousands of children in Africa.
Imagine it was your own child. Yeah. I know. (@jconthagrid)
Brendan:While certainly not a ‘bad’ film by any stretch of the imagination, Beasts of No Nation lacks personality or energy to distinguish from so many other death-of-innocence films, and the rambling nature of the story means the two-plus hour runtime drags on and on. Fukunaga’s is a master visual stylist, and many moments and images are quite striking and even unnerving, especially when the film enters the outright hallucinogenic. But those moments are few and far between, stranded between bog-standard war movie clichés.
You’ll see a lot of praise for both leads, Idris Elba and young Abraham Attah. The praise is half right. Attah is indeed amazing, expertly charting the darkening of a soul. But Elba, while talented as ever, is stranded by a character that has no specificity. His ‘Commandant’ is every single cliché of a terrifying/charismatic war-mentor rolled up into one, and nothing Elba does can elevate it.
I didn’t feel real annoyance with Beasts until the end, when Fukunaga arrives at an extremely interesting and under-explored area of the child-soldier life…which the film then has to speed through because there’s only five minutes left to go before the credits roll. It’s a shame. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:Engaging from beginning to end, Beasts Of No Nation is a bit like the most terrifying part of Blood Diamond — the children brainwashed into guerrilla soldiers — expanded into a full feature film.
The film opens with some familial warmth and even laughs, endearing child protagonist Agu to the audience before dropping him into Hell on Earth. His innocence is destroyed as his family is killed, and he’s then coerced into joining what’s essentially a roving murder squad, becoming that which took his own family. It’s harrowing and eye-opening, and yet still provides a glimmer of hope. Most of all though, it’s a real reminder that we take our own blessings for granted. (@VforVashaw)
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!
