It’s a good thing an actor such as Elba plays this part-one false move and the course that Beasts of No Nation offers in Brutality 101 would dip into the aforementioned unwatchableness if it were even slightly more disturbing.
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Regardless of Fukunaga’s unflappable confidence, pulling off “Beasts of No Nation”, which premieres on Netflix and at Landmark theaters on Friday, was hardly a sure thing. And now, Netflix may have just given the film world a true game changer. (The head of the rebels is a venal little Goebbels of a man.) The African bush looks as verdant as Henri Rousseau’s forest-Fukunaga amplifies the colors into hallucination, to reflect the horrors Agu sees and perpetrates. Young Agu (Attah) is torn from his loving family and forced to join a guerrilla fighter unit, where a charismatic warlord known as the Commandant (Elba) takes him under his wing.
Mention this scene to Cary Fukunaga, the writer, director and cinematographer behind this harrowing sequence, and he’ll nod solemnly, staring down at a restaurant table he’s sitting at, right outside of the Toronto worldwide Film Festival’s headquarters. But Fukunaga rejects any implication that the film, adapted from the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala, might have been intimidating. It’s a film about the real cost of war, and few portraits have been this unflinching and unforgettable. His camera operator pulled a hamstring, so Fukunaga filled in. “By the time we finished shooting, it was a full-blown epidemic”. Agu’s commentary tends to be more neutrally descriptive, which perhaps makes sense given his age, but also negates the ability of this narrative device to reveal more about a character’s personality.
On set, Elba took what he calls a “raw approach” to working with Attah and the rest of the child performers.
That all being said, this is arguably the first true Cary Fukunaga picture.
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Elba describes Beasts of No Nation as a platform to show “the emotional underbelly of child soldiering”. Garnering much hype for a lengthy, unbroken tracking shot that confirmed his run on the aforementioned HBO series as one of the most groundbreaking directorial achievements of this “golden age” of TV, there are many long sequences here, including a bravura tracking shot involving a raid led by Agu. That sentiment is backed up by early critic reviews who have praised the soon-to-release film. He believes strongly in the big-screen experience of movies, and hopes people seek the film in theaters.
