It's distressing enough children living in the U.S. have to put up with antediluvian school shootings as their boomer-parents get hooked on pain-killing pharmaceutical opiates, yet America's rapacious lust for drugs, firearms, and geopolitical injunction on behalf of its southern neighbors has helped perpetuate and foment a decades-long civil war in the heart of Colombia’s jungles and Andes mountains. Most notably in unstable and politically-fraught regions like Medellin and Bogota, which have endured ubiquitous increases in child-soldier armies gripped by interminable intra-party warfare. South Park, now in its 23rd season, posited an episode earlier this week which put a spotlight on the militarized southern border, campily titled "Mexican Joker." In it, Kyle Broflovski, the show's lone Jewish protagonist, is sent to one of these frightful detention centers, and much to everyone's horror there, his accidental detainment is deemed an “egregious mistake” because, well — history. Kyle points out to the I.C.E. facility guards that these young children are subjected to daily psychological terrors, and one may well end up becoming the very next Joker, an arch-comic book villain who’ll be getting his own origin story early out next month. That these kids, who’ve been systemically robbed of their childhoods, reflects a terrible indictment of the adults around them, and Alejandro Landes' "Monos" shows us a world wherein these very same adults have driven their juveniles to a dangerous and lethal series of breaking points, forcing them to be tormentors rather than tormented — and lines between good and evil are steadily blurred as they age out of their innocence, forging a new fractured adolescence.
1984's film "The Killing Fields" illustrated a blunt reminder about the Khmer Rouge massacres, also known as the Cambodian genocide which left 1.5 to 2 million people dead. That children, some as young as 11 and 12, could be commandeered to carry out such heinous mass killings with such ease, remains emblematic of why they are so frequently used as collateral puppets in these ongoing efforts. Not quite adults, yet entirely capable of deciphering between right and wrong, it is perhaps why they’re fashioned into mini-mercenaries who wield their weapons of war like toy guns purchased from Wal-Mart. In “Monos” Landes' characters are genuinely unique because they each share a subjective view of the world in the context of their placement in it; to them, the doctor who's been kidnapped is both their enemy and simultaneous sacred cow, anything happens to her and they’re automatically beaten or killed. For this, there is a standoff-ish relationship which invariably punctures their interactions with restrained emotions. If not for our media’s perpetual reminders that the outside world beyond our borders is inherently dangerous — after all, we’ve cultivated a landscape through the chronic exploitations of South America's resources — and what have we done to thank them?Created glorified escapist shows like "Narcos," that propagate the nostalgia of the 1980's whilst spawning a collective boogey-man on-screen and in our minds. Landes' work is salient not just because it shutters this narrative completely, but because it embraces the human suffering and tragedy that often go unexamined in such films. Do we care that these children are forced to live this way, or are they just collateral damage borne out of a drug war we created to justify our unquenchable greed for cocaine, coffee and other wares?
It’s useless to try and dredge up easy answers in Landes' seminal film, and he sets up his world for exactly that; there is a timelessness to the whole affair which suggests “Monos” could've taken place yesterday, 30 years ago, or even 10 years in the future. It’s as much about survival as it is a blistering recrimination of the factions which have not resolved war to attain peace without leading to further insurrection and bloodshed. The film’s soul rests squarely in the hands of its young actors and impeccable cinematography, though it’s Mica Levi’s deftly haunting score which adds to the composer’s collection of witchy goosebumps that lend the work its firmest footing. Unlike the classical approach to 2016's "Jackie," here she returns in a callback to her "Under The Skin" roots, replete with another minimalist, sumptuous arrangement of simplex sounds elevated to astral, sky-high art. “Monos” works best as a testament to Colombia's willingness to recognize itself and its problems on celluloid, since the movie was financed (mostly) by national grants and state-level endowments. Perhaps because, much like Brazil, Chile, and Argentina before it, there’s a newfound flood of stories bursting from the veins of this overlooked expanse, especially in cinema today. This isn’t a movie which bludgeons its mother country by portraying it as another acrid, narco-trafficking hell-scape. “Monos” is a beautifully layered absolution of the world’s adult influence over children, and the effects of the Pablo Escobar years which wrought manifold revolutions and uprisings in their wake. This is a grandiose picture, told on a small, moving scale that deserves to be seen by anyone who’s ready and able to sit through it all.
“MONOS” a.k.a. “Hail to The Grief” Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes.
