Movie Review: Monos

Monos **** / *****

Directed by: Alejandro Landes.

Written by: Alejandro Landes and Alexis Dos Santos.

Starring: Sofia Buenaventura (Rambo), Moises Arias (Patagrande – Bigfoot), Julianne Nicholson (Doctora Sara Watson), Laura Castrillon (Sueca – Swede), Deiby Rueda (Pitufo – Smurf), Paul Cubides (Perro – Dog), Sneider Castro (Boom Boom), Karen Quintero (Leidi – Lady), Julian Giraldo (Lobo – Wolf), Wilson Salazar (Mensejero), Jorge Roman (Buscador de Oro), Valeria Diana Solomonoff (Periodosta).

 

Monos is a film that takes place in the wilds of Columbia – for the first half on a cloudy, wet mountaintop, and for the second half, in the jungle. It focuses on a group of child soldiers – who work for something referred to only as “The Organization”. The purpose of this group is to watch over an American hostage – known for most of its runtime only as Doctora (Julianne Nicholson). The group mainly though just parties – they drink, they dance, they fire off their automatic rifles into the nothingness around them. They are children, playing a real world, adult game – but that is what they are doing – playing. They all have nicknames – mainly juvenile ones like Rambo, Smurf, Boom Boom, etc. The film never tries to tie any of this to any kind of real world politics. It’s not interested in that.

 

The film opens with a bizarre training montage – where the groups adult contact with the Organization, runs them through their exercises, before he leaves them to their own devices. They have two jobs – keep the American hostage alive, and keep the cow they have been gifted alive. What follows are those parties – where they dance around like untamed animals. Things start to go awry when the cow is killed, and shortly thereafter, the groups teenage leader kills himself. The group that seemed tightknit starts falling apart from this power vacuum, as no one is quite sure how to proceed.

 

Nicholson is given a difficult role here, and plays it well. In one sense, she is the only adult in the room so to speak, but she is also the one with the least amount of power. The children are seemingly nice to her – or as nice as you can be while still holding someone hostage. She indulges them somewhat – but never really sympathizes with them, and is always planning her escape. They are children, and she knows that, but they are also her captors – the ones preventing her from leaving, and she knows that as well.

 

The first half of the film – on that mountain – is in many ways dreamlike. The cinematography is gorgeous here – with the drifting clouds hovering around the mountain. The atmosphere is aided greatly by the score by Mica Levi – who adds another great score to her young career, following Under the Skin and Jackie. That half comes to an end is absolute chaos – a raid on the mountain, explosions, and gunfire – although director Alejandro Landes makes the decision to mainly stick with Doctora, and her overseer for this time, in an underground bunker as the chaos plays outside. The second half, set in the jungle, is even more chaotic – as Doctora tries to escape, and the group slowly implodes. Levi’s score grows more thunderous as the movie escalates.

 

In some ways, the film is a kind of Lord of the Flies tale – with children, left on their own, replaying the adult savagery they have witnessed. The child soliders don’t have much individual personality – they are more personality types than people, really – although the mounting chaos separates them as the characters are forced to make decisions. The decision to not make the film overtly political doesn’t always work – I felt in a film like Beasts of No Nation, the attempt to make things universal failed, because the characters kept talking around specifics that would undeniably have been said in the real world. Here though – it works. There is no set political ideology here, no real ideals at all. These children have been drawn into a world that they don’t understand – but they kind of don’t care to understand. For the moment, they are happy to be partying with their friends – a part of something bigger, even if they don’t care what that bigger something is. And the filmmaking draws you in – there are many close-ups of the children’s mud splattered faces, where they really do feel young – and then shots of the vast wilderness that surrounds them, engulfs them, and swallows them whole.