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.

Further Thoughts on Beasts of No Nation

In my original review for Beasts of No Nation, I mentioned how important it is that Agu’s experiences as a child soldier aren’t uniformly horrific.  As perverse as it sounds, it’s true that he at times finds friendship, a sense of purpose, and a feeling of power in his circumstance, all of which play a major part in keeping him there.  Like many abusers, the Commandant makes Agu feel like he needs him as well as the army, makes him feel like there’s nowhere else he can go, and so he stays.

In a different but related vein, I really like how Agu’s life is depicted in the early parts of the film, before the war, getting separated from his family, and being conscripted.  So often, America is given a single narrative of what “African life” looks like.  “Poor African.”  “Starving African.”  “Suffering African.”  “For just $.10 a day, you can help…”  It’s all squalor and suffering and pity.  However, that’s not what the first act of Beasts of No Nation gives us.

Don’t get me wrong:  Agu and his family are poor, no question.  From the looks of it, just about everyone in his village is poor.  But if you asked Agu, I’m sure he wouldn’t describe himself as a suffering African.  On the contrary, he, his older brother, and his friends invent numerous creative ways to pull lighthearted cons for a little extra money or food.  Whether they’re trying to get the occupying soldiers to buy “imagination television” (the empty shell of a gutted TV,) catching chickens, or volunteering to clean up messes of their own making (for a profit, naturally,) wheeling and dealing is just part of everyday life for him.  He doesn’t view it as a grim necessity, or even a chore; instead, he views it as a challenge to be met.

Time and again, the film shows that Agu’s poverty doesn’t negate his happiness.  His family may have unreliable electricity and no indoor plumbing, but being “poor Africans” doesn’t stop them from being very much a typical family.  Agu plays with his friends, his older brother obsesses about girls, and all the men/boys in the family make rude noises at the dinner table to rile Agu’s mother.  Agu teases his brother in the pestering way that only younger siblings can, and his brother responds by tackling him to the ground. 

The soldiers don’t really seem to be regarded as figures of danger or protection.  Instead, they’re just sort of there, men with more money than Agu’s family who might be cajoled into purchasing junk from a charming kid with bright ideas.  And even the looming prospect of war really doesn’t cast a pall on Agu’s life until it arrives.  This aspect of the film’s early scenes is interesting to me.  The war is talked about distantly, remotely.  It’s occurring in Agu’s country, but far away enough that it doesn’t touch him.  Though everyone knows that the war is making its way toward them, it’s treated like the imminent approach of harsh weather; they know the storm is coming, so they’re making hay while the sun shines.  Agu’s parents store up food and other resources in anticipation of the war’s arrival, and his brother is desperate to sleep with his crush before the war comes.  The refugees from further out who come through the village augur what is approaching, but it’s not tangible for Agu until it actually happens.  Granted, part of that is down to him being a kid, but it’s also a great demonstration of “life will out” and the idea that people are people no matter where they’re from or what they’re going through.  That, to me, is so critical, and it helped me to know right from the start that Beasts of No Nation was going to tell its story respectfully and well.

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

This is a hard, harrowing movie to watch, but it’s also incredibly affecting and stunningly well-done.  If it were up to me, the film would be swimming in Oscar nods.  As I said earlier, it really seems like the sort of movie the Academy would adore, and in this case, it would wholeheartedly deserve all the love it could lavish.

For young Agu, the war in his country was once a far-off abstraction.  Now, however, he’s lost most of his family, and the rest is lost to him.  Alone, wandering, and starving, he is “rescued” by a rebel army who elects to make him one of them.  Torn between his horrors at the brutality of war, his need for his strange new “family,” and the corrupting influence of his deceptively-charismatic Commandant, Agu fights to survive in what his world has become.

For me, the most powerful thing about this film is that it’s not all abject horror and misery.  That sounds really strange, but it’s true.  As he becomes a child soldier, yes, Agu is terrified, guilt-ridden, and running on pure survival instincts.  He commits horrible atrocities, sees his friends die, suffers abuse, and is used as an expendable pawn in someone else’s war.  There’s no question that his situation is monumentally terrible.  But it’s not all terrible, which is part of what makes it so dangerous.  After seeing his father and brother killed by soldiers, the rebel army becomes an outlet for Agu’s grief and anger.  His fellow soldiers become his brothers, and there are times when he feels strong, enfranchised, needed.  That’s the insidiousness the runs through all the undisguised monstrosity.  The Commandant feeds and clothes Agu, trains him, gives him a sense of purpose, and, the way he tells it, saves Agu’s life.  Agu is raised on the Commandant’s propaganda – taught to love his war and crave his approval.  In these moments where it isn’t blatantly horrific, the Commandant and the rebel army worm their way into Agu.  This, just as much as his fear of surviving on his own or being despised as a war criminal by any stable community, is what keeps him from escaping.  I give the movie so much credit for getting this, that the psychological damage runs even deeper than the trauma and horror that’s already there.

Idris Elba has, quite understandably, been getting most of the film’s attention for his dynamic performance as the Commandant.  As horrible, as self-serving, as manipulative as he is, you can see exactly why Agu and the other boys/young men would be drawn to him.  (It’s totally the sort of alluringly-complex villain role that Christoph Waltz would get Oscars for.)  As Agu, Abraham Attah makes a breathtaking film debut.  Agu’s world is one that most people, blessedly, will never experience, but in Attah’s hands, there’s no sense of distant, removed suffering.  Instead, Agu’s confusion, terror, and turmoil feel real and immediate, his character achingly specific.  Attah also beautifully sells the antithetical feelings warring within Agu.  I really, really hope we see more from him.  Additional shoutout to Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye, who plays fellow child soldier Strika.  Without a single line of dialogue, he creates a richly compelling character whose relationship with Agu is one of the highlights in a film crammed with knockout moments.

Warnings

Extreme violence involving children (including graphic battle scenes, executions, and implied sexual abuse,) additional war violence and sexual content (including rape,) language, drinking, drug use, thematic elements, and disturbing images.