Beasts of No Nation
Beasts of No Nation possesses the same haunting imagery and command of action as director Cary Fukunaga’s previous project, True Detective. Shot on-location in Ghana, the film is a brutal but thoughtful account of war, as seen through the eyes of a young boy (played tremendously by newcomer Abraham Attah) whose family is savagely murdered in the midst of a civil conflict. (The country goes unnamed.) He joins the ranks of the opposing army, and he’s steadily transformed from wide-eyed child to desensitized soldier under the guidance of his devout, damaged and menacingly tender Commandant (Idris Elba).
Beasts of No Nation is incredibly effective – it makes its points with ruthless violence, but the production never feels sensationalized or without clear intent. This is a humanistic demonstration of the costs of war, and it’s captured with sensitivity and even-handedness, especially with Attah and Elba doing such powerful work in the lead roles. It helps that Fukunaga, also Beasts’ cinematographer, has one of the best eyes of any director working today – he mines extraordinarily complex images in the Ghanan bush, the lush greens overwhelming the senseless guerrilla warfare. The movie is at once a visual feast and a bleak morality play. As linearly adapted from Uzodinma Iweala's eponymous book, Beasts of No Nation does suffer from the kind of overstuffed, scene-to-scene structure that works better in written form. It lacks the concision necessary to land with holistic impact, even if nearly everything within its two-hour-plus running time is superbly executed. B+
Chi-Raq
If there’s a 2015 movie where I’m farthest away from the critical consensus, this is probably it. The sentiments of Chi-Raq, Spike Lee’s pointed adaptation of the Greek comedy Lysistrata, are sound, and its ambition is admirable. A farce, a tragedy and a polemic at once, the movie seeks to musically and dramatically dismantle the barrier of talk surrounding America’s most dangerous war-zone: the city of Chicago. The wonderful Teyonah Parris plays the girlfriend of a gang member (who goes by Chi-Raq, and is played well by Nick Cannon) who starts a celibacy movement: keep sex away from the men until they stop killing each other.
If only the idea didn’t fall so flat. Lee and co-writer Kevin Willmott lack the lyricism crucial to tackling dialogue-as-verse, and this leads to a string of embarrassingly trite and sanctimonious blocs of writing. The central conceit of the piece is agreeably satirical, but it’s undercut by Lee’s heavy-handed approach – between John Cusack’s outraged preacher and the lengthy, teary monologues, the film is trapped in a bubble of artificiality. Uncomfortable as mere comedy but unconvincing as political drama, there’s nothing to connect to beyond its loud opinions. Chi-Raq is so erratic and tonally misguided, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine where this film could make an impact – a goal the film all but states directly on repeat. The sound-mixing is distressingly off, the camerawork weirdly unfocused and the emotional landscape underdeveloped. It’s sloppy – and redundant. Spike Lee takes a big swing here, something to commend. You can certainly hear his anger – indeed, rarely are socially-conscious movies this overt – but in aiming for the fences, he misses the opportunity right in front of him. D+
The Look of Silence
Joshua Oppenheimer’s masterpiece The Act of Killing gets a subdued, careful follow-up in The Look of Silence. Continuing to explore the malleability of memory and history in his investigation of the 1965 Indonesian genocide, Oppenheimer turns his focus from the perpetrators to the victims in a smart and stimulating alteration. As a visceral depiction of violence valorized and guilt repressed, The Act of Killing still stands out – remember that ending scene? – and since The Look of Silence is so comparatively measured and quiet, it can’t quite reach its predecessor’s level of emotional devastation. Even so, it’s hard not to wish that more documentary filmmaking reached far and wide like this one, and with such acute attention to detail. B+
The Second Mother
Classically composed and exceptionally intelligent, Anna Muylaert’s Brazilian drama The Second Mother is a vivid portrait of class and familial conflicts. The film examines the ripples that take effect in an upper-class Sao Paulo family after its maid’s daughter comes to stay with them on an indefinite basis. She’s questioning of the dynamics in-place – Why can’t her mother use the pool? Why does she have to sleep in a closet when there’s an open bedroom? – and, in turn, threatens the fabric of their day-to-day. Muylaert has a gift for building natural tension, and it’s spellbinding how The Second Mother manages to be so rich and yet so spare in its depiction of a family increasingly at odds with itself.
Regina Casé is utterly brilliant in the lead role as Val, the family maid. There’s a comic undertone to her work, even as it delves into the deeper subjects of surrogate motherhood – the family son adores Val, but he’s distant from his own mother – and insidious privilege. It’s full-bodied acting as you rarely see, and she simply sings in fierce duets with Camila Mardila, who plays her daughter Jessica. The Second Mother is a great example of minimalist cinema, observational like an intimate slice-of-life but also biting and slick, quietly sneaking into people’s lives before erupting with stirring dramatic resonance. On the strength of Muylaert’s perceptive script and exacting direction, the film exposes the nuances of human behavior. As both an empathetic and analytical engagement, it’s the unsung gem of the year. A