MONOS: A Hypnotic Look At Guerrilla Warfare
Monos, the latest film from Colombian-Ecuadorian writer and director Alejandro Landes, doesn’t give us much background. We don’t know where, who or why the eight child guerrilla fighters we follow are fighting. We don’t know how long they’ve been enlisted into the war they’re in or where they came from. And that it ultimately the point Landes is making – the primal nature and loss of innocence from war is universal.
The Monos, which translates to monkeys in English, are a group of teenage commandos who go by names like Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura), Bigfoot (Moises Arias), Wolf (Julian Giraldo) and Boom-Boom (Sneider Castro). A man they call Messenger (Wilson Salazar), is their only contact to “The Organization,” the group they fight for. They’ve been entrusted with keeping an eye on Doctora (Julianne Nicholson), their American hostage high above a remote mountain in an unnamed Latin American country.
While it’s an important task, they seemingly mostly hang out, fire their guns and indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle. They develop strange traditions in their isolation like beating a boy on his birthday and various daily training routines. They are servants to the Messenger and a two-way radio that connects them to the larger fight.
Despite what you might think, children serving in a guerrilla war is not all great. The squad slowly eats themselves apart from the inside and descend into madness that comes to life like night terrors or a bad trip. The comparison between Monos and Lord of the Flies as well as Apocalypse Now is an apt one.
By taking away any sense of the context the group fights in, from cause to location, Landes has created a riveting descent into chaos and madness. It’s a story that feels as intimate as it is universal. These group of children could be almost anywhere, at any time. Monos takes your hand to the fringes of civilization and society before dropping you into a captivating look at our most primal nature.
The year’s most visceral film
The best thing I can say about Monos is that it’s absolutely engrossing. From an immensely powerful score and cinematography that builds tension and shows off the raw, untamed topography the Monos fight in, Monos absolutely stimulates the senses at every moment. You feel uneasy the entire time, even without excessive amounts of violence.
It’s less concerned with narrative and depicting the unhinged descent into chaos these kids face. It’s not even too concerned with character development. Instead, Landes focuses on the idea of youth, and what war does to youth. Even if the film doesn’t end things in a nice bow, it leaves you shaken and raw from almost two hours of sensory overload in the best way possible.
It would be remiss not to mention the performances of the child actors. Moises Arias plays Bigfoot and has the most experience from his role in Ender’s Game. The rest of the Monos are non-professionals who will make you believe. The savagery mixed with moments of humanity is especially impressive considering they shot in extremely challenging conditions. Landes deserves a lot of credit for getting these performances out of them.
A story of war as intimate as it is universal
As Monos progresses, the kids go from having fun and feeling free to facing the realities of war. Their once free spirits have to make a choice, do they want to be child fighters in a war so much larger than themselves, or do they want to be kids? Each character of course does make their choice and some of them face extreme consequences for doing so.
It is a story that – despite being shot in a suffocating and claustrophobic scale – feels universal to far too much of the world. There are far too many wars going on where after a while, the agendas and politics of it don’t even matter to the people facing the day-to-day struggle. They just get caught up in everything.
Rather than focus on this big picture, Landes focuses on the lowest run of the ladder and the most vulnerable group. By the end of Monos, we see the toll it’s taken on them. They have lost their identity as children. Their primal instincts have taken over – they truly are monkeys (monos) more than human.
Landes even said about the setting, “They’re a squad of soldiers in the ‘back’ lines of a war— but also just a tight-knit pack of teenagers. Though the specifics of the Colombian civil war are the source of inspiration, the idea was always for the experience of the film to cross borders and exist as a world in and of its own.”
Monos: A bone-chilling, heart-pounding look at guerrilla warfare
Monos isn’t getting a ton of attention, but is certainly one of the year’s strongest foreign films. The comparison going around of Lord Of The Flies meets Apocalypse Now is fair, but almost underserves the brutal universality of what Landes has created. It’s an unflinching descent into chaos in the best way possible. Monos isn’t simply a film you watch. It’s one you feel with every sense. It will haunt you long after you’ve finished watching it and will hopefully be recognized come awards season.
Monos will be released in US theaters on September 13, 2019 and in the UK on October 25, 2019. For all international release dates, see here.
What’s your favorite war movie? Sound off in the comments and let us know.
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