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I think the scene that's been lingering with me the most is the part where everyone turns on the Commandant and surrenders. I LOVE the lack of closure there, that it doesn't go for something as simple as Agu or even the lieutenant (I forget his name) killing him - without ignoring that as a possibility - and just has him left to this ambiguous, unresolved fate. Plus it helps that both Elba and Attah are just stunning.
Uncle Boogeyman fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Oct 21, 2015 |
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Oct 21, 2015 04:23
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:The long take in the trench with the camera moving around Agu as he slogs around in knee-high water, surrounded by virtual corpses, the blood red walls closing him in, is one of the most visually stunning things I've seen in a while. Absolutely.
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Oct 21, 2015 07:17
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:The long take in the trench with the camera moving around Agu as he slogs around in knee-high water, surrounded by virtual corpses, the blood red walls closing him in, is one of the most visually stunning things I've seen in a while. That shot in the trailer is what actually sold me on the movie. A good shot!
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Oct 21, 2015 12:29
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Terrorist Fistbump posted:The long take in the trench with the camera moving around Agu as he slogs around in knee-high water, surrounded by virtual corpses, the blood red walls closing him in, is one of the most visually stunning things I've seen in a while. I can't even find words to express how amazing this sequence was; it's maybe the best sequence in a movie I've ever seen. Everything about it is absolutely perfect, and the contrast between Agu at the beginning, a regular kid in a green world playing with his friends, and Agu in this shot, with his helmet and bandoliers and gun just zombie-walking through that red hell is up there with the end of The Act of Killing in how hard it made me  , and I didn't think there would ever be anything to compare with Mr. Congo suddenly realizing that his whole life has been a murderous rampage and he's going to burn in hell forever for it. The narration is also just heartbreaking. "Mother... I have to talk to you now, because God's not listening anymore." What a loving soul-crushing thing for a child to ever, ever think. And just think... every horrible thing in this movie is happening for real, right now. I didn't know who Fukunaga was before this but he's now on my "See whatever this dude makes on the first day" list for sure.
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Oct 21, 2015 13:18
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The long take in the fourth episode of True Detective S1 is what made me go from "this cinematographer is really good" to "holy poo poo, I'm going to go out of my way to find stuff that he works on." I wasn't sure how much of it was Fukunaga vs. Arkapaw at first, and I didn't realize until later that he'd written / directed Sin Nombre, but this movie sealed it for me.
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Oct 21, 2015 16:46
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:The long take in the fourth episode of True Detective S1 is what made me go from "this cinematographer is really good" to "holy poo poo, I'm going to go out of my way to find stuff that he works on." I wasn't sure how much of it was Fukunaga vs. Arkapaw at first, and I didn't realize until later that he'd written / directed Sin Nombre, but this movie sealed it for me. Arkapaw's no slouch. The Snowtown Murders is a beautifully ugly movie.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:19
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:Arkapaw's no slouch. The Snowtown Murders is a beautifully ugly movie. Oh definitely, his work on Top of the Lake was great too. I didn't mean to imply he was bad, I just wasn't sure at first how much space Fukunaga actually had to do his stuff when they were working together.
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Oct 22, 2015 01:29
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Just finished it. This is easily going to be one of the top 5 films of this year. It is amazing that film was done with the budget it had. Idris Elba and Abraham Attah were amazing. The movie was beautiful and horrifying at the same time.
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Oct 22, 2015 07:57
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Didn't see this thread when I watched this last weekend, so I'm just gonna go ahead and add to the chorus as to how visually stunning and soul-crushing this movie is. I didn't know anything about it before watching, so it was a real sucker punch for me. Was there any reason, implied or otherwise, that Agu couldn't go back to find what was left of his family? I thought maybe that would be part of the ending but it never happened or was even mentioned beyond him saying "I had a mother", etc. which suggested she was dead, but I don't remember anything pointing to why he would think so. Grizzled Patriarch posted:I think the actual setting is left ambiguous in the book as well, though the cadence of the language is really similar to a few Nigerian dialects (which might just be because the author is Nigerian). Is the way they spoke in the movie an actual patois somewhere in Africa? I've never heard any like it before and I couldn't tell if the other characters were just saying their lines the way Agu would since he was the narrator.
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Oct 22, 2015 22:37
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raditts posted:Didn't see this thread when I watched this last weekend, so I'm just gonna go ahead and add to the chorus as to how visually stunning and soul-crushing this movie is. I didn't know anything about it before watching, so it was a real sucker punch for me. The author has claimed in interviews that he wasn't trying to be particularly accurate with the language, and was instead basing it roughly on a few different dialects / pidgins he encountered in Nigeria. There have been some critics who argue that Iweala, as an American-educated author of Nigerian descent, isn't really all that familiar with the speech he is trying to render on the page (a lot of them argue specifically that he's making the language a lot more staccato and more heavily-inflected than it should be, and the more cynical critics claim it's a deliberate attempt to make the novel sound more "exotic" or "African" to western audiences). There have also been arguments that his decision to step away from absolute sociolinguistic accuracy was a stylistic choice - a sort of mimetic rejection of realism for artistic effect. And in the book at least, yeah, everyone's words are filtered through the narrator. No idea if that was meant to be carried over to the film or not.
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Oct 23, 2015 00:43
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I liked the ambiguity of the setting, as it kept the film focused on telling Agu's story and not dipping into a complex political situation that might raise issues of representation. The use of three-letter designators for factions was great, especially because they never said what the any of the letters stood for apart from the NDF.
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Oct 23, 2015 01:34
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They did for the Junta on the beginning, it was National Reconstruction Comitee
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Nov 2, 2015 23:40
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centaurtainment posted:I liked the ambiguity of the setting, as it kept the film focused on telling Agu's story and not dipping into a complex political situation that might raise issues of representation. The use of three-letter designators for factions was great, especially because they never said what the any of the letters stood for apart from the NDF. This sort of thing is incredibly common in post-colonial Africa, to the point where it becomes alphabet soup and makes me reflexively think of that Judean People's Front scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Different "liberation" factions started to spring up en masse shortly after most states declared their independence or, in Liberia's case, overthrew the old oligarchy. Sometimes the factions have legitimate political goals, but more often than not it's just about power and money. To anyone who wants to learn more about how Africa got in the state it's in and how child soldiers became a mainstay of combat in Africa, I would highly recommend Martin Meredith's The Fate of Africa and Romeo Dallaire's They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children. I read both recently and they're incredibly comprehensive. The Fate of Africa touches on child soldiers fairly briefly when it gets to the Liberian Civil War, but it is a ridiculously comprehensive look at pretty much every African country during and after colonial rule up to just a few years ago. I'd honestly recommend it to anyone regardless of their interest in Africa because of how informative and detailed it is. Since both books are so fresh in my mind, I haven't mustered up the will to watch Beasts of No Nation yet. The subject matter is as harrowing as you'd expect.
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Nov 3, 2015 02:07
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Did anyone feel as though the sexual abuse angle was unnecessary? The commandant was charismatic, complex, and his morality was reprehensible in a very real way. While I understand that such a thing occurs in the real world it seemed tacked on to me. He had enough depth without throwing in a quality that cheapened him and turned him outright evil.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:38
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El Ste posted:Did anyone feel as though the sexual abuse angle was unnecessary? Are you saying that without that angle, he wouldn't be outright evil? I didn't think it felt tacked on at all. Sexual abuse is a very real and prevalent component of the world of child soldiers.
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Nov 29, 2015 19:42
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:Are you saying that without that angle, he wouldn't be outright evil? I don't think I worded myself well. I'm aware of the prevalence of sexual abuse amongst rebel groups and in the world of child soldiers. For the sake of the story, and for Idris Elba's character, in my eyes it seemed like an unnecessary dimension. He was outright evil no doubt - but his evil was very much a result of the perpetual cycle of conflict he was born into. His politics and his leadership style were the centerpieces of his character and their plotline followed in a logical, nearly inevitable manner, leading to his ultimate demise and abandonment by his soldiers. His sexual deviance was alluded to for all of thirty seconds as something of an afterthought to address the issue but, to me at least, seemed oddly incongruent with his character. It could just be me. I loved the film regardless and thought it was totally brilliant.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:00
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i saw it less as sexual deviance and more as the horrible obvious: he rapes them to control them.
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Nov 29, 2015 20:38
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The Commandant uses rape behind closed doors to individually control his soldiers, but when they collectively turn on him in public at the end, he is completely impotent. The psychological power he has over them -- their vague fear that this boogeyman is capable of some heinous act of violence if crossed -- is the last means of control he has after his promises of wealth, women, food, political power etc. are revealed to be just so many words. When he turns out to be a coward (like child molesters generally are), the children are finally complete free from his mental bondage.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:37
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:i saw it less as sexual deviance and more as the horrible obvious: he rapes them to control them. Yeah, I don't know how you could watch that scene and infer otherwise. Just the way he was wording things so manipulatively from the beginning of the scene had me thinking, "oh no, this is going to get rapey soon, isn't it."
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Nov 30, 2015 06:53
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El Ste posted:I don't think I worded myself well.
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Nov 30, 2015 18:02
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El Ste posted:I don't think I worded myself well. Institutional sexual abuse tends to be cyclical as well. It reinforces a theme that you yourself have identified.
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Dec 1, 2015 00:09
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Its one of those details that was absolutely necessary, the portrait of the commander and the whole dynamic would have been lesser if not included. They're not painting with nice comfortable broad strokes as in so many films I was surprised by the sexual violence but, again, it is better that the story did not gloss over these or many of the other issues raised.
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Dec 1, 2015 00:15
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coyo7e posted:So basically, you like the actor so much that you were offended by them portraying something which offends you? No. DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:Its one of those details that was absolutely necessary, the portrait of the commander and the whole dynamic would have been lesser if not included. They're not painting with nice comfortable broad strokes as in so many films It did feel glossed over to me. It appears that I'm the only one who felt this way though so I'll just have to hold my hands up.
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Dec 1, 2015 03:42
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