Relationship Spotlight: Strika & Agu (Beasts of No Nation)

This is maybe an odd relationship to write about from this movie, since the totally frakked-up, bizarre father-son Stolkholm Syndrome relationship between the Commandant and Agu is clearly the center of the film.  However, as understated as the bond between Agu and Strika is by comparison, for me, it’s the film’s heart (some spoilers.)

In a way, Strika is just one more piece of the paradoxical honey trap that is the Commandant’s forces.  While the Commandant steps forward as a twisted father figure to fill the void of Agu’s recently-murdered father, Strika is offered up as a sort of surrogate brother.  Many of the other soldiers are older than Agu and intimidate him, but with Strika, there’s a chance that he might prove a friend to Agu.  And so, this boy becomes another element luring Agu into a false sense of belong, kinship, even normalcy.  Playing with Strika, fighting alongside him, and seeing how he cares for Agu, the hooks of the rebel army sink deeper into Agu’s skin, making it that much harder to run away.

Despite Strika’s youth, he’s a more “seasoned” soldier than Agu is and is therefore a good choice to further indoctrinate him into the army.  Strika has already been pulled under the Commandant’s riptide, and he’s hardened himself to the blood that’s stained his hands.  He can show Agu the ropes and watch his back when they’re in a hot spot.  It would be hard for Agu to compare himself to the older, bigger soldiers, but looking at Strika, you can see how Agu might think, “I could be like him.”  It’s certainly in the Commandant’s best interests that Agu and Strika become friends.

But it’s more than that, because no matter how advantageous it is for the Commandant’s machinations, the friendship that forms between Agu and Strika is true, and the Commandant can’t touch that.  In some stories, Agu and Strika might have given one another the will they needed to break free and escape the army, but here, they’re instead one another’s means of clinging on.  They talk – or rather, Agu talks, while the mute Strika communicates in other ways – skirting around the enormity of the issues that have upended their lives.  They do play, finding flashes of moments in which they can feel like children and, maybe just for a minute or two, forget the horror of their existence.  They protect each other, both physically and emotionally.  After the abuse Agu suffers, you know that he needs more than the quiet, non-judging companionship Strika gives him, but it’s all either of them have, and so they figure out how to sustain Agu with it.

Beasts of No Nation is a heavy film with many hard-hitting scenes, but the one that gets to me the most is easily the last scene shared between Agu and Strika.  In a cruel, violent, unjust world in which people exploit them and risk their lives in the name of someone else’s agenda, in which no one cares whether they live or die, they care about each other.  In the midst of all the darkness, brief points of light.