Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019)

Essentially an exploitation film that doesn't have the courage of its convictions, Alejandro Landes' third film is redolent with high-art atmosphere, much of it second hand. There are extreme long shots of mountains jutting out from flatlands, with big swirling skies of painterly circumstance, the sort of celestial light we've most recently come to associate with Carlos Reygadas. Not too long after an expansive Turnereseque opening, Landes shows us young soldiers in shoddy fatigues in a dusty clearing, grappling and separating in a rhythm pitched halfway between martial and balletic. This sequence is a direct quotation of Claire Denis' Beau Travail.

So what the hell is going on here? Well, Monos is a deeply embedded portrait of a group of child soldiers in a strategically unnamed Latin American country. They are part of an unspecified, presumably leftist rebel group, answering to a larger command somewhere else. (We only ever see one adult commandante, who relays orders to this ragtag detachment of fuckups.) Their primary objective seems to be guarding an American hostage (Julianne Nicholson), making sure she stays alive and helping the group produce periodic proof-of-life videos.

But Monos does not care about Latin American politics, and in fact it uses the concept of child soldiers and the very real issue of insurgency in Latin America as a pretext, one that allows not only for an air of seriousness that Monos in no way actually earns, but that also provides for shoot-em-ups, jungle escapes, and above all, an engagement (I can't really say "exploration") of Lord of the Flies style bullying and mind games among the boys and girls in the troop. They fight, they hoot and holler, they fire their guns and set off fireworks, they fuck (when they have permission -- at least until military discipline begins breaking down), and they establish floating hierarchies of dominance by taking turns humiliating each other, and "Doctora" (Nicholson). It's all very bangarang.

But actually it's tiresome, because Monos uses the limitations of the rebel army's rule book whenever it is convenient. These are kids with guns, and they go nuts, but only so much so that we don't turn away in horror. We are meant to empathize with them, because a film that truly demonstrated how being inducted into such a system as a child shatters the psyche, eliminates notions of right and wrong, would run afoul of Monos' bourgeois audience and our need to see children as somehow redeemable. (This is the crux of the film's final third.) I am not exactly itching to see more violence against women on screen, but the fact that the Monos don't rape and torture Doctura is just a convenient fiction. These kids are only ruthless to each other, which simply doesn't scan. It's as if, beneath it all, they are lovable scamps. ("I want to dance on television.")

And in the end, this speaks to Landes' unwillingness to countenance the ostensible topic of his own film. He uses it as an armature for action sequences and pulse-pounding suspense. (Not for nothing was this a Sundance awardee.) But we don't even know if the Army are fascists as compared to the Monos. Nothing has any meaning. It might as well be a junior-level episode of Dude, I'm Screwed with a hint of Battle Royal. The arthouse icing is just the final insult, a blatant attempt to score a four-quadrant hit.