Who's the best new director to emerge from the past decade? Ask me today, and I'd say Cary Joji Fukunaga. I've heard great things about his debut Sin Nombre and his Jane Eyre adaptation, but I can testify that the first season of True Detective was masterfully made, many thanks to Fukunaga.Beasts of No Nation is a tremendous film. I fell for the source material a couple of months ago, and Idris Elba can hardly ever go wrong. I don't want to say I expected great things, but I did. And I got them. Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation is one of the year's best films.
Nation stars youngling Abraham Attah as Agu, who starts the film as a boy and ends as a boy, but a changed boy - changed by civil war and recruitment as a child soldier for Elba's army. Idris Elba's commandant is a fantastic character, one we love to hate because of what he does, but sympathize with too because of his failures. Then we feel guilty for our sympathy.
Beasts of No Nation is definitely a feel-bad movie, but it's rewarding and gorgeous. War is an ugly thing for anyone to experience, and it's awful that a movie about a child soldier has to remind us of war's pointlessness and futility. We learn very little about the conflict Elba's army is involved in, but we know that Agu must fight to survive. Fukunaga's cinematography is gorgeous though, which makes it hard to turn away from the film.
9/10
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