Beasts of No Nation (2015) The heart-breaking Horror of the Child Soldier (Review)

In 2021, the Netflix original movie is an established industry release line, one that has become synonymous with directors making passion projects that wouldn’t be possible elsewhere. Back in 2015, all of this was but a glimmer in the eye of the then Netflix Executives with one of the first projects to have the Netflix Original moniker coming in the form of Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, an adaption of Uzodinma Iweala’s book of the same name. A film which has now been released on the Criterion Collection, the second Netflix Original to receive such a release following Alfonso Cuarón’s critically acclaimed ROMA (2018).

Netflix, like any online streaming service, YouTube, Disney Plus, whatever, compresses all of its content – this fundamentally means that nothing looks as polished as its creator intended. Beasts of No Nation took mere moments for the true gravity of this to sink in. Fukunaga has a history with cinematography (which he talks about in the extras) so his films tend to push for visual style and beauty, so to see the colour and endless African expanse, this all leaves an impact. I’d go as far as saying that if you originally watched this back on Netflix it is worth a rewatch if only to experience how much life the Blu-ray format restores to this dark and difficult film.

Beasts of No Nation takes place in an unnamed West African nation and revolves around the loss of Agu (Abraham Attah) and many other children’s innocence as he is subjected to the horrors of a lawless war. Starting off as a playful boy who pees in his brother’s shower and kicks a football around with his friends, his relative peace is destroyed when his only potential escape route hits a dead-end and an elderly local woman, who is well known for having a next to non-existent memory, denies that she knows Agu, his dad, elder brother and a few other village members when held at gunpoint by the self-professed national army. Unfortunately, he is the only survivor as he runs off into the jungle. He eventually happens upon another of the 3 military outfits in the jungle, the one fronted by the cult-leader-like personality of Idris Elba’s Commandant – a warlord who has many child soldiers among his battalion.

Despite taking place within a war, this is much of a politically charged coming of age story. The plot focuses on what Agu goes through, and the few genuine connections he makes – namely a mute boy around his age who goes by Strika (Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye). This is an important distinction to make as if Beasts of No Nation focused its attention on stripping its key players of their humanity whilst subjecting those very young souls to the very worst and most violent excesses of war, a movie with a heart this big and a steadfast political streak it would merely just be another Come and See or the Painted Bird (2019). That Fukunaga spends most of the 2 hours and 20 minutes characterising a group of young lost men being corrupted by a man who you could define as evil elevates the material beyond other titles of the like. That being said, if you are desperate for the war portion of this horror story, you will also be well served. There are horribly violent skirmishes scattered throughout, with the main one landing about halfway in which the Commandant (Elba) makes his men kill everyone in a small township that he labels as traitors. A sequence so horrific is shot with a dreamlike, out-of-body haze to illustrate the moment where Agu believes he makes the transition from boy to “beast”.   

Most of the cast is made up of non-professional African Actors save for British acting icon Idris Elba and, honestly, prior to watching it, I thought he was too prominent. All this authenticity with a ‘movie star’ plonked in the middle. For this issue to vanish is a credit to Idris Elba in a role that many have defined within the black and white terms of “evil”. For me, that undersells the immense moral complexity; like the Joker says in The Dark Knight – “I’m like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one…”.. Commandant is what happens when the mad dog catches something, he has lost his mind and with a group of loyal men acting on his every whim – his is a story every bit as tragic as the young leads, probably more so. This a character who pushes his superiority complex by carrying out the evilest of acts upon all around him, this, a character where the actor all but becomes the role. As incredible as Elba is, the young Abraham Attah holds his weight every step of the way. Attah brings a beautiful honesty to a character who is torn equally being fighting a war he does not understand and fighting himself. He clings hopelessly to any vestige of humanity he has left, despite knowing that his actions are that of a monster. And for an actor so young to negotiate those many shades of grey: it’s beyond impressive. 

Beasts of No Nation captures the horror of being a child soldier about as well as any film ever could. Consequently, this becomes an oft-difficult and unrelenting watch and not just because of the subject matter. The way that Fukunaga treats death and the loss of innocence will stay with me for a long time. Yes, it may be overlong, hard work and politically relentless, but it’s the emotional hammer at its centre that makes this about as true a one time and done watch as I’ll ever review. An excellent film, yes, but a difficult one to recommend.   

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THANKS FOR READING ROB’S REVIEW OF BEASTS OF NO NATION

Reportedly drummer Dave Rowntree still finds this film unwatchable; Graham and Ewan are a little more generous. That said, the film’s main asset is the one director Matthew Longfellow barely seems to notice: it depicts the band on the verge of releasing Modern Life is Rubbish, an album which saved them from one-hit wonder status and set the agenda for the next decade of British rock music. POP SCREEN

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