John Hanke, the Founder and CEO of Niantic, is here to tell you it doesn’t need to go that way. He is nothing more than a weak man presiding over his army of traumatized boys deep in the jungle, and is presented as such.Science fiction writers, filmmakers and futurists have warned for years about the potential for a dystopian future where technology has created a dark, uninviting, hostile world. He is not human in the way Agu is, and has no inner warmth. They are cold blues, deep olive greens, and harsh natural light. Despite his apparent warmth and paternal connection to the boys, the colors Fukunaga uses betrays his true nature. He is a fundamentally sick man that truly wants boys to become killers, and truly wants to rule over them. At heart he is a traumatized child, just a young boy horribly mentally scarred by the senseless violence he has witnessed. Agu is regularly lit with a warm orange and wears warm, bright colors. This is reflected in the colors around him and Agu. He appears to be invincible, walking unarmed into enemy fire, but is cut down when faced with his higher ups. Yet he presents himself as the one sane man, a father, an older brother, and a king, all at the same time. He is clearly a disturbed and deranged man, thinking nothing of using child soldiers and regularly abusing the children. The Commandant is an incredibly compelling character. To the viewer, it becomes apparent that the lives of enemies mean nothing now, and the Commandant had succeeded in making Agu an efficient killing machine. To him, the killings are dulled, allowing the red of the people’s blood to flow into the redness of the foliage.
Many of the child soldiers use some kind of opiate to enhance their abilities in battle, and this scene takes place after Agu uses for the first time. It is as if the plants of the earth are bleeding the same as the people massacred in each village. As Agu and his comrades enter the village, mowing down their enemies, all the greens turn to a light red/pink color. The muted colors of the film reflect that, taking the vibrancy and beauty out of the world.Īnother striking use of color is found in a battle scene about halfway through the film.
Taking a life is no longer an event, but simply a motion. After seeing a man brutally hacked to death with a machete early in the film, the bullet wounds then feel tame.
It speaks to the larger theme of the cheapening of life that the film presents. The picture maintains a washed out color pallette, which sucks the life from the lush green forests and casts a strange hopelessness over the events shown. One of the most fascinating accomplishments of the film is its excellent usage of color.
The film echoes such works as Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and McCarthy’s Blood Meridian while presenting the generally untold story of life as a child soldier. He is the leader of a large force of child soldiers, and he leads them through a combination of charisma, fear, and some approximation of fatherly love. After his family is split up and murdered, he runs deep into the African bush and comes into contact with a man known as The Commandant. It tells the story of a young West African boy named Agu whose life is torn apart by civil war in a fictional country. Beasts of No Nation is a 2015 film directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga and based on the book by Uzodinma Iweala.
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