Monos - Entre o Céu e o Inferno

This film works mostly in a metaphorical context, so it's unlikely you will know much of why things are the way they are, but I believe that's the point.

Add "Monos" to the long line of movies that make me feel like I know very little about the world I live in.

I wasn't sure whether this bizarre story about child soldiers in Colombia was based on real events or a fictional allegory for the state of the country. So I researched and found myself learning about the long history of armed conflict within Colombia, a country that has been at some version of war with itself for seemingly forever. Turns out children are conscripted to become soldiers, though I still feel like the specifics of this movie are a fever dream version of how these situations actually play out in real life.

People have described "Monos" as being "Apocalypse Now" crossed with "Lord of the Flies," and I can't improve on that comparison. It's a stunning movie in all ways -- stunningly told, visually stunning, stunningly acted, by a cast of very young, mostly unknown actors at that. The word "visionary" is used to describe all sorts of films and directors who don't warrant the honor, but this movie is the real deal.

Grade: A

Beautiful landscape. Strange storyline. Great soundtrack. Not everyone's cup of tea.

Bizarre story about a jungle commando in South America. Most of the actors are kids. Many resemblances with Apocalypse now.

I'm a Colombian, this movie represent the fears of most of the young people the absence, of state, family or someone who guide you or show the other ways to live a life. Most of the decisions that a young colombian is decided by fear or experience in this case, violence. This movie represent in their characters different personalities in a group of friends that had to act like adults. It's a perfect critic to the state what happens when a young dont want to live through violence or unlike with it?. This movie show reality that is hide from media, a scream of bravery a young people that make choices maybe the only choices that he or she have. I saw it with my family, and my parents really understand it because it's not only to my generation, represent a lot of history and kids that live that right now it's not only a movie is a story that can read past, present and future of young people in colombia, fit in every time, that is the way to see it. Just research about young and kids in colombia to really appreciate the movie, i'm very lucky young in colombia have study, family and opportunities but i'm a concerned about other regions that not even have water, educations or opportunities to choose a live.

I see people saying you need to know about the Colombian context in order to truly understand this film. Maybe that is true to an extent, but the director deliberately removes any context that would tell you about the situation. That is for a reason. Because context is removed, you don't know who the characters are fighting for or why they're fighting. You can't say whether they are on the 'good' or 'evil' side, if there even is one at all.

From the get-go the film immerses you into their lives forcefully and vividly. You don't need to know what the wider context or motive is to understand the very human drama. What I see is children making decisions based on a range of factors: fear, power, pride. But I also see children who are missing vital components of a human's existence because of the war that forces them to think like robots at times. Paradoxically, they also have the freedom and lack of authority to let them run riot at times, manifesting in wild, irrational decisions and bizarre, disturbing rituals. This unnatural state of being, war plus lack of social structure, is the cause. Yet you do get glimpses of their youth being expressed in more innocent ways, that remind you that there is still some humanity buried in there.

I like that despite the situations the characters are in, Monos isn't bothered with making you pity them. It's interested in things other than that well-worn trope. It doesn't try to make you hate them either. Rather, it shows how they can do evil things, irrational things, and occasionally, good things. But ultimately, child or adult, war makes demons of us all.

Another thing that really hooked me into this film is the cinematography, which is at times beautiful but is foremost fixed on expressing the characters' emotions. During crazy ritualistic behaviour, it becomes frenzied. As the group becomes increasingly disjointed, the camera is increasingly disorienting too.