“Beasts of No Nation” opens with a scene of children in Africa playing soccer. We do not watch the scene directly, but through the body of a decrepit television set that sits just near the field.
This is how most Americans – and Westerners in general – have seen the situation in Africa for decades: Through a television set while changing the channel. Director Cary Fukunaga uses “Beasts” to show us what happens once the channel has been turned.
“Beasts of No Nation” takes place in an unnamed country in West Africa currently in political peril. After a rebel group claims that the Junta government is illegitimate, civil war breaks out. Agu (Abraham Attah) was not a violent killer before the war. He was a young boy who did whatever he could to pass the time with his friends while making a quick buck.
It’s not until he lost his father and brother during fighting between the army and the rebel group led by the Commandant (Idris Elba) that he transforms from boy into a killer.
Far from being an exotic epic, the film is still shot as such with sweeping establishing shots of the African bush that are topped with equal parts smoke and fog. Yet it still has the intimacy of a smaller film in which the only objective is to shed light on an issue.
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The street-to-street fighting is coupled with scenes like the militia playing soccer and soldiers having conversations under stolen trucks. It is ironic that these human moments come from people who have lost varying forms of their own humanity.
This balance between the big and the small creates a spectrum of the unrest in Africa that has only once been explored by the 2014 documentary “Virunga.” Unlike “Virguna,” however, “Beasts” does not directly point the finger to any one entity for the disorganization of the continent. It understands the complexity of the politics that drive the perpetual violence, that for some reason the rest of the world continues to turn the other cheek towards.
“Beasts” also understands the human need to be a part of something bigger. Though the Commandant is a monster in his own right, he gives purpose to his young soldiers. What they’re fighting may not be clear, but who they are fighting with is. Nothing, not even life, is above the camaraderie of the soldiers.
Africa as a whole is no stranger to violence, from the routine slaughter of one tribe by another in Rwanda and Sudan, to the continued destruction of communities by groups like Boko Haram, it is easy for Westerners to come to the conclusion that an African life is worth less than an American one. “Beasts of No Nation” disproves this thinking.
Both “Beasts of No Nation” and “Virunga” are currently streaming on Netflix, and “Beasts of No Nation” is playing at select theaters.
