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Monos (15)
Directed by Alejandro Landes
THIS visceral and haunting thriller was voted Best Film at this year’s London Film Festival and deservedly so.
Inspired by the Colombian civil war, the youth in Monos serve as a metaphor for a young nation still searching for its identity and dreaming of peace according to director Alejandro Landes, who co-wrote the script with Alexis Dos Santos. But it’s a film transcending borders and existing as a world in its own right.
It opens with eight teenage commandos — Wolf, Bigfoot, Lady, Rambo, Swede, Boom Boom, Smurf and Dog — undergoing military training exercises on a high mountain top among the clouds somewhere in Latin America. The impression is that they are at the summit of the world, living in their own wild reality.
Their unit, codenamed Monos (“monkeys” in Spanish), is watching over American hostage Doctora (an impressive Julianne Nicholson) and prized cow Shakira which, in a scene gory enough to turn anyone vegetarian, comes to an unfortunate end.
When they are not training under the watchful eye of their instructor The Messenger — played by Wilson Salazar, himself a former commander of a feared guerilla combat unit who deserted FARC, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces — they are letting off steam with youthful hedonism.
Shooting off guns, fighting and having sex, it is all very reminiscent of Lord of the Flies and, on occasion, Apocalypse Now.
The stunning vistas from the mountain top, with an endless view of white clouds, are breathtaking. It appears to be a heavenly domain, miles away from all the violence and troubles in the world, but when the action transfers to the jungle in the second half of the film the atmosphere turns hot, brutal, claustrophobic and ever increasingly hazy as the group starts to fracture and unravel when their prisoner escapes and the tension mounts.
With raw and compelling performances from its young cast and glorious visuals complemented by Mica Levi’s distinctive and resounding score, Monos is a surreal and thought-provoking drama which lingers in the mind.
