Australian Odeon

man with a machete, as he begs for his life on his knees, is harrowing and nigh unwatchable, but essential for establishing the brutality of the conflict and the injustice being served when children are taken advantage of to fulfill the desires of the predatory men directing them. This idea is made most explicit during a scene in which Elba’s Commandant beckons Agu into his tent to praise him for his bravery and offer him a cap before coercing him into something much darker. Peppered throughout the film are snippets of Agu's internal monoluge, which are stunningly effective as they are neither intrusive nor arbitrary but instead help to articulate his understanding of what is happening to him.

 

Young Abraham Attah delivers a performance balanced with just as much intensity and nuance as anything DiCaprio, Blanchett or Damon have turned out this awards season. He imbues the character of Agu with a tragic resignation to the events occuring around him, but in which he plays an increasingly active role. However, he is never truly lost in this nightmarish world, most heartbreakingly when he mistakes a woman hiding in her house for his mother and collapses at her feet. Idris Elba gives a stomach churning performance as the Commandant, whose hold over the children he grooms is both fatherly and lascivious, who himself is just as much subject to the whims of those above him as the boys he commands.

 

Given the subject matter, it would seem safe to think of the film as an exercise in despair, but there is hope to be found in Agu and the journey he takes through the horror of a fictitious civil war that stands for the multitude of conflicts on the impoverished continent. In what would usually be perfunctory scenes designed to establish his idyllic existence, the opening sequence shows Agu to be a precocious but ingenious child, attributes which help him preserve what humanity he can throughout his ordeal. In his final monologue delivered almost directly into camera, there are still glimmers of that boy, but he is undeniably changed forever.

 

Beasts of No Nation is currently available to stream on Netflix.

In an unnamed African country, a civil war forces young Agu (Abraham Attah) to farewell his mother and younger siblings as he and his father and older brother stay behind in their village. Through a tragic confluence of events, he becomes ensnared by the Commandant (Idris Elba) who forces the boy to become a child soldier.

 

Cary Joji Fukunaga directs, writes and shoots one of the most harrowing films in recent memory. The film’s distinctly un-Hollywood style lends a sense of authenticity to the proceedings, making them that much more difficult to watch. A scene in which the Commandant orders Agu to kill a