Director-Cary Fukunaga’s excellent presentation and tiny breakdown of Nigerian-American author Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 novel-Beasts of No Nation into a movie with the same title brings out the odd beauty in war without undermining the intrinsic brutalities well associated with a jungle and haphazardly coordinated war—where child soldiers are the ultimate killing machines.
The film opens with young Ghanaian actor-Abraham Attah (who plays Agu) living in a small village, which served as a buffer zone for UN peacekeepers in an unnamed country plunged into war—but soon, the well protected village also lost its safety net.
Immediately before an attack which throws the almost peaceful village into insane panic, Agu’s mother (played by Ama K. Abebrese) and his younger sister joined the women and children of the village in a chaotic escape to a city as the men stayed behind to defend their lands.
Agu, who at this stage had connected well with viewers from the earlier few scenes which showcased him as an innocent silly young man left with nothing meaningful to do except to indulge in all manner of jokes and tricks with his friends and family because of the war was left behind—alongside his older brother and father.
A brutal attack on the village ignited the vehicle that drove the whole film. Agu’s first hand experience of the viciousness of war: the killing of his father and brother right in front of him pushed his legs to run far into the forest in search for refuge.
Soon, Agu the innocent one man refugee on the run became a member of a ferocious battalion, led by Commandant (played by Idris Elba). But this was after the film-maker had cleverly and in detail broken into particles the sort of tough trainings and spiritual initiations new intakes including Agu had to undergo—to become full family members of the battalion.
Though the film is vague about why war had broken out and the actual mission of Agu’s new family of soldiers, including several child soldiers—it makes it obvious the battalion holds no mercy and has no conscience within which it operates. It’s a deranged unit made up of unstable products of the war to kill and capture villages.
The brutalities of the war seen through Agu’s eyes, backed by his narrative put on screen: the violence, gruesome killings and the unending desire of the soldiers to fight for what seems like a blank promise founded on deceit. And in between these atrocities which Agu plays pivotal role lived his fears, the uncertainty of the future and his hunger to see his mother again.
