On “Beasts of No Nation”

A number of critics have recently made the argument that Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, about a boy named Agu who becomes a child solider in an unnamed African country, is made more universal by its ambiguous location.

For instance, Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter writes:

“A narrative like this could credibly be set in any number of post-colonial nations, and getting bogged down in what actually happened in this or that country could sap the tale of its penetrating application to many locales.”

Ann Hornday, at The Washington Post, adds that naming the country in the midst of a civil war might have distracted the audience with contemporary specifics, since “Agu’s wrenching story gives singular, unforgettable voice to a reality too easily ignored when it’s conveyed in fleeting headlines or dispassionate news briefs.”

Fukunaga himself has claimed he was trying to create something broadly inclusive, saying the film is fundamentally not an “issue film” but about “how universal our desires are in life.”

This argument though, that the ambiguity of the country makes its messaging stronger, is somewhat strange, considering the fact that plenty of anti-war films in the past have been credited with addressing “universal” themes while telling very specific stories. For instance, in his review of Saving Private Ryan, which is clearly about a few US troops in France during World War II, Roger Ebert wrote:

“Spielberg and his screenwriter, Robert Rodat, have done a subtle and rather beautiful thing: They have made a philosophical film about war almost entirely in terms of action. “Saving Private Ryan” says things about war that are as complex and difficult as any essayist could possibly express, and does it with broad, strong images…”

And few were arguing that same year that Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line would have been improved had he focused on a generic army and war. Instead, many lauded how deep that World War II film was, including Film Comment, who said it was “as much about the psychic fortifications men construct in order to survive war as it is about its psychic and moral consequences.”

Fukunaga’s work is receiving similar praise, yet much of it is attributed to the way it flattens “Africa” into one exotic mass of land.

Which is important to note: Beasts of No Nation is not set in a completely generic locale, nor can it really be mistaken for “any number of post-colonial nations,” as McCarthy writes, because it’s clearly set in the continent of Africa.

The film’s story doesn’t stand-in for all war stories then, because it is not about all continents, or people of all skin colors.

Child soldiers have been abducted by ISIS in Iraq and Syria; they have also been used in Sri Lanka and other Asian countries over the last two decades, but Beasts of No Nation is not about those children. As Foreign Policy reports, “fewer than half of the countries that have engaged underage combatants since 2011 are in Africa.” Furthermore, despite Agu (Abraham Attah) being surrounded almost exclusively by boys, the same article cites that “forty percent of the child soldiers around the world are girls.”

Children are turned into versions of soldiers everyday in the United States as well, exposed to extreme violence or fighting to survive in other ways, but this film does not intend to represent them. It is, as the media continues to describe it, an “African war film.”

Which makes you wonder, would this kind of generalizing be overlooked on every continent? For every region of the world? As A.O. Scott writes in The New York Times:

“Imagine a fiercely realistic film about genocidal violence in the 1940s set in a place identified only as ‘Europe.’”

If Saving Private Ryan can have a message about war which is applicable to all wars, though, what would Beasts of No Nation have lost had it been set in a specific country?

On the other hand, by not giving the story more context, what is lost is the ability to see these characters as actual human beings — rather than caricatures. David Sims, in his review at The Atlantic, writes:

“The powerful vagueness hurts the film’s ability to do more than straightforwardly depict the brutal life of a child soldier.”

Fukunaga has said he has “no interest in educating people” with his film, yet nevertheless it has provided a global audience a set of images which further associates “child soldiers” with the continent of Africa. Thus, it is absolutely an “issue film,” with a particular perspective.

And even though it is an adaptation of a novel written by Uzodinma Iweala, who was born in Nigeria, the film has its own, separate history to contend with. Because film is a different medium than literature, and the insertion of actual images — the use of actual human beings living in Ghana to represent this story — transforms its impact. And changes its meaning.

It puts Iweala’s story in the context of 100 years of othering Hollywood cinema about “Africa” and people of color. It exists with countless other hypermasculine and hypersexualized images of brutal black men on the big screen. It sits amongst all those films where black women’s bodies are disposable — their humanity diminished — and where true empathy is never reached, nor the goal.

Beasts of No Nation fails to challenge the systems of oppression which kids like Agu are trapped in, because its generalizing encourages American reviewers like Richard Roeper to see it broadly as “a visceral gut-punch about the never-ending insanity of war,” without having to think about what that specifically means in a place like Sierra Leone. Or who it impacts most. Or why it happens.

In reality, the wars in South Sudan or Yemen are not the result of mysterious philosophical beliefs and actions, they are the intentional result of white supremacy and a human system of exploitation — of economic policies and laws — which has targeted black and brown people for centuries.

Ultimately, lurking beneath many of these reviews, and in the images on screen, is that same tired vision of Africa which informs those oppressive policies. Where the various wars, customs, and people blend together into something always tragic, brutal, and terrifying. Beasts of No Nation does not invite us to look more closely then, but to look more generally—which is, to look away.