NZIFF Film Review: "Monos" (2019).

From the director of Porfirio comes Monos. This Colombian war drama film directed by Alejandro Landes, and written by Landes and Alexis Dos Santos. On a faraway mountaintop, eight teenaged guerillas with guns watch over a hostage and a conscripted milk cow. Playing games and initiating cult-like rituals, the children run amok in the jungle and disaster strikes when the hostage tries to escape.

Lord of the Flies (1954), Heart of Darkness (1899), Come and See (1985) and Beau Travail (1999) served as influences for the film. By late 2016, Julianne Nicholson and Moisés Arias were cast. More than eight hundred children across Colombia were considered for the main roles of child soldiers. First, twenty to thirty were chosen to participate in a weeks-long camp in mountains, where they received acting training from Argentine actress Inés Efron in the morning, and military training from Wilson Salazar in the afternoon, and the final eight were cast among them. Salazar was a FARC soldier from eleven to twenty-four, and Landes found him at one of the reinsertion programmes Landes visited for research. Landes first hired Salazar as a consultant before casting him as the Messenger. The role of Rambo, who goes by Matt, was originally written to be a boy, but Landes made its gender ambiguous during the casting process. Ultimately, Sofía Buenaventura was cast. The film marked the big screen debuts of the main actors aside from Arias and Nicholson. Karen Quintero and Laura Castrillón had acting experience in theatre. Since this film, Buenaventura and Giraldo have continued acting in film. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and lasted nine weeks. Filming took place throughout Columbia. The mountain scenes were shot in Chingaza National Natural Park, four hours outside of Bogotá and more than four thousand m (thirteen thousand ft) above sea level. The jungle scenes were shot around the Samaná Norte River in Antioquia Department, five hours from Medellín. According to cinematographer Jasper Wolf, both locations had never been captured on film before. Mica Levi came on board after seeing an unfinished cut. Landes asked Levi for a "monumental, but minimal" score. Levi first made short compositions involving whistles, made by Levi blowing into a glass bottle herself, timpani, and a synthesizer sound, around which further compositions were built. Different sounds were assigned to represent various characters: a shrill bottle whistle became the "authority whistle", evoking the presence of the Organization; a bird-like whistle represented the bond among the child soldiers; and timpani accompanied with the authority whistle represented "the shadowy force that tries to control the group from a distance". The score is used sparingly throughout the film, taking up only twenty-two minutes.

The true surprise in the film is how little these child actors actually don't feel like 'child actors'. With few exceptions, the acting rarely seems to be forced or flat. This practiced, well-honed craft aids Landes’ vision of a documentary approach that pulls the viewer into each scene.

Alejandro Landes' haunting, hallucinatory War drama epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.

Simon says Monos receives:

Also, see my review for Elle.