On the mossy bank of a reservoir, three women sit combing their wet, dark hair in the mist. “Do you want me to braid your hair?” a younger girl asks an older woman in Spanish. The image resembles an illustration in a book of classical mythology, or a painting in The National Gallery. You would never guess that the two teenage girls are child soldiers who spend their days walking around with machine guns. Or that the older woman is their hostage. And that is the beauty of Alejandro Landes’ 2019 film, Monos – it constantly shifts and surprises you.
Film critics and viewers alike are often inclined to search for some kind of message in the films they watch, yet Monos manages to entirely escape this categorisation, and even openly opposes it. Instead, it disorientates the viewer, immersing them in an eerie landscape which evades both temporal and geopolitical contexts. While the director, Alejandro Landes, was inspired by (and magnificently captures) the unique, complex and violent history of his Colombian homeland, Landes also hoped to create a film which tells more universal tales of modern-day warfare, human nature and even puberty.
So what is it about this picture that has won countless awards, received five star reviews from virtually every critic, and was labelled ‘Apocalypse Now on shrooms‘? The film follows the lives of the Monos, a group of teenage soldiers working for The Organisation, a mysterious presence that holds authority over them. While living on a remote mountain top in the clouds, they must engage in ruthless military exercises, watch over their American hostage ‘Doctora’, and look after a cow called Shakira.
After the Monos emerge victorious from a fight against unknown enemy forces, the group relocates to the jungle and it is in this leafier, more humid setting that the group, and any sense of structure or sanity, begin to fragment. Members of what Landes calls the “mini-society” start to turn against each other, and the line that we like to draw between good and bad blurs into an ominous haze of trigger-happy madness.
The film amalgamates sounds, images and clothing from different places, and periods in time to create its own little world, void of any context. While the Monos’ army uniforms do look similar to those of Colombian guerrilla groups, they also fashion plastic sacks into outfits and wear black padded jackets resembling something from Star Wars. The army camp itself is also surprisingly liberal; the teenagers experiment sexually, take shrooms and are fluid with their gender – Rambo has both feminine and masculine characteristics and Dog, who goes by male pronouns, sometimes wears fishnets and mini shorts. Even the scenery is confusing, with strange Soviet-style concrete blocks embedded into the serene, natural Latin American landscape. The film is all about fluidity and changeability, be it gender and identity or modern-day warfare.
At moments, the little world in which the Monos live feels magical. The combination of Jasper Wolf’s beautiful camerawork and Mica Levi’s hypnotic musical score create a surreal impression. The camerawork is intimate and physical, with close-up shots of naked skin in highly saturated colour to capture humanity in its most natural and primitive form. Levi’s technique of blending modern electronic music with sounds from nature further adds to the film’s ethereal feeling; she repeatedly uses a distinctive choppy electronic sound throughout the film to give a sensation of rising adrenaline among the teenagers as the film gets closer to its climax. However, both the intimate cinematography and the sinister music not only reflect the intense nature of war, but also an internal conflict of puberty and adolescence.
While the film does have an other-worldly feel, it is also strongly rooted in reality – a Colombian reality. Since the mid twentieth-century, Colombia has been in a constant state of political turmoil in what has come to be known as ‘The Invisible War’, where there is no clear enemy but rather multiple factions fighting against each other. The groups involved consist of the state, the military, paramilitary groups, guerrilla soldiers, and foreign governments, but the relations between these different groups are complex and ever-changing.
The war has led to an estimated 260,000 deaths and has displaced about seven million people. While the Colombian government signed a peace treaty with FARC in 2016, the situation is volatile and even the prospect of peace brings newfound fears for many Colombians. In an interview at the Berlin International Film Festival, Landes stated that he hoped to use the film “to narrate two fears” that prevent Colombia from “obtaining a stable and lasting peace”: one being the possibility that the reinsertion programmes won’t work and the other that even if the leaders of these groups do cooperate with the peace process, some individuals may splinter away from the bigger organisations and create new, ever more dangerous factions.
The inspiration taken from the Colombian civil war is not only evident in the general feeling of fear that lurks below the surface throughout the film, but also in particular details which have been taken directly from the conflict. For example, the Monos are all children who seem to range from around 13 to 18, and at points it is suggested that they were taken in at a young age and recruited by the Organisation. FARC has also been known to recruit child soldiers, some taken in after their own parents have been killed by the group. A disturbing scene towards the end of the film in which three young children are left cowering under a table after seeing their parents being shot by the Monos is evocative of this and shows how the cycle of violence continues.
By shifting between the horrific, the ethereal, and the primitive, Landes has managed to create a raw film about humanity that goes far beyond the context of the Colombian conflict. Monos does not try to provide answers but rather surrenders to the complexities of warfare, human nature, and adolescence. It isn’t a film that is merely watched but rather experienced, crawling under your skin and leaving an indelible impression.
Image credit – Leon Hernandez / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
