A group of child soldiers in the harsh wilderness of Colombia have their bonds, heads and hearts tested as they struggle through adulthood and a war that they do not fully understand.
Monos is as a wild a film as its setting suggests, the bleak landscape and equally bleak narrative corresponds into a great partnership towards giving the audience quite unsettling feeling upon watching this immersive world unfold. The audience is hit straight in the face upon the first minute into the world of a group of child soldiers and the chilling world that they call home, a war-torn Colombian wilderness.
Relatively unknown director Alejandro Landes’s only previously known work was Porfirio from 2011 which makes this outing that much more impressive, seemingly finding a natural talent for portraying the rugged realism of South America. Nominated for Best Foreign language Film at that year’s Oscars as well as winning the Special Jury Award at Sundance shows just how polished and well thought of it was, coupled with an extraordinary score composed by English musician Micachu which is almost the centre point of the film, it creates a uniquely eerie atmosphere that moves from tranquillity and is a notifier for the calm before the storm and towards an unrelentingly, quiet state of mind as the film picks up and drops pace at various points throughout seamlessly and with a perfect fluidity.
Something special that stood out for me above all else in this film was the sublime cinematography, an immense mix of camera techniques that I am unable to think of it being done before. The use of drones to give us a sense of the unrelenting environment, wide shots, push and pull focus, slow motions blurs for a particular hallucinogenic trip that the group participate in. Its use of montage as well gives us an idea how harsh a landscape such as the Colombian mountains and jungle would be to survive in, adding suspense and terror to an already unsuspecting film. All the creation of another unknown in Jasper Wolf, who, going off this effort has a long and successful career in the film industry.
The film first greets us to the group of adolescents as they are playing football whilst blindfolded, the backdrop of a harsh Colombia in the distant. They are guerrilla soldiers, living in the wilderness as a section of defence for an unknown army fighting an unknown war. Although this band of misfits are soldiers, this does not mean they are not still children, lost and confused and still wondering about life, wanting knowledge, a chance at love and the opportunity to make mistakes. They could be distinguished as metaphor for Colombia as a nation with Colombia still being in its infancy as a country, a country still yearning for a unique identity that it can be proud of. Both dreaming of peace yet not allowed to experience it as they are both thrown into conflicts, they have no right to be involved in.
The story progresses quite uniquely, it blends a mix of slow action where we see these children being children and enjoying the company of one another, experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs leading to a particular creative representation of what that would possibly feel like, reminding me of films such as 1969s Easy Rider. Curiosities and experimentations with sex and drinking remind us that these characters are still young and have been stripped of any innocence they once had by whoever controls them.
Events arise where the group must come to terms with losses in the camp, feelings of loyalty and morality to one another and to their superiors, leading to a chain of events that tests their very spirit. It gives us an unsettling look at human nature and the way people can act to certain things, there is a real sense of the human characteristic, almost an animalistic urge to survive in the harshest conditions and when being hunted themselves. One part of the plot that expresses this need for survival involves one character who has been kept against her will the entirety of the film with no explanation for her existence until the very end, yet what it does show is a never say die attitude of the American Mum blueprint that so many great characters of years gone by have been based off.
The film is a mismatch of styles and influences from films of different eras, the last twenty minutes or so was a particular section that hit me with excitement, and the way it was carried out was very reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, the fast paced chase at the end is almost a carbon copy yet also so very different to one another, with one character, the appropriately named Rambo fearing for his life and using all those skills he has gained throughout his journey of soldier hood into practice.
Monos is a film that I loved so much, I found it so unique to any film that I have seen previously and yet it still is not a perfect film. However, this that makes it feel unfinished and raw is what lets it breath and excel as a spectacle, with this, it is aided by its amateur actors and somewhat amateur director as they all portray what makes Colombia so special and wonderous and they use this for performance and narrative.
Available to watch on Netflix now.
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