If I had to compare Manos to something, I’d probably pitch it as Lord Of The Flies meets Apocalypse Now, as I’m sure many who have already seen the film through its festival run may have already made. And while it’s certainly appropriate enough, it only touches on the surface of what makes this such an incredible and engaging and thrilling experience. It’s the third film from Colombian filmmaker, Alejandro Landes, following an eight year gap since his second film, Porfirio, back in 2011, which I have not seen. He also co-wrote the story with Alexis Dos Santos, and it follows a squad of teenage commandos who are stationed on a remote mountaintop keeping watch over a hostage they simply refer to as Doctora (Julianne Nicholson).
We follow some of their day-to-day, much of which is spent time dicking around because…well, it’s a remote mountaintop, and there’s not much else they can do aside from train and follow whatever orders they’re given from the “Organization,” the rebel group that they are apart of. One day they are given a cow named Shakira to watch over, and collect milk from. However, things take a turn when one of the kids accidentally kills the cow when they were randomly shooting their gun, and it proceeds to cause a domino effect that eventually leads to the group taking Doctora into the jungle after escaping an ambush by government forces. From there, the film explores the group dynamic even further, pushing the extreme circumstances until the foundation of their camaraderie falls apart.
Landes doesn’t offer a whole lot of context here. He simply drops you into the madness, leaving you to fend for yourself against the purposefully brash and near-anxiety inducing filmmaking as you follow these kids, each of whom are only referred to by their nicknames like Bigfoot (Moisés Arias), Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura), Lady (Karen Quintero), Smurf (Deiby Rueda), among several others. The cinematography by Jasper Wolf is both manic in capturing the raw emotions and grim realities of these kids lives, while also beautiful and picturesque in how he captures the lush and colorful vistas of the Colombian jungles and mountains. The droning, otherworldly score from the always stellar Mica Levi is used to great effect, and used rather sparingly, in order to establish a mood that makes a large portion of the film feel almost post-apocalyptic.
The film largely seems to be a comment on the cycle of trauma and violence that I’m assuming is rooted in the experience of growing up alongside the Colombian Conflict, which has been an ongoing thing since the mid-60s. It’s made clear as the film goes on that some of the kids don’t necessarily want to do the things that they’re told to do, but have to because of the circumstances and pressures placed on them. They don’t seem to know what they’re doing half the time, and some are quick to say or do whatever necessary to get out or rat out another member. Much of this is explores in the second half once everyone is forced into the jungle, where all the relationships are tested and characters are pushed in ways they haven’t before. And because it’s all about how this cycle continues on and on, we don’t really get much in terms of closure.
Some of these choices to limit the film in some respects. It makes the characters operate less as fully realized characters, and more like symbols and walking, talking metaphors, which is fine enough, as long you know that’s what you’re getting going in. Because Landes throws you in the middle of all this mayhem without any exposition or even an audience surrogate, it does feel like you’re there as an observer as opposed to actively engaging with the narrative and the characters. Again, I wouldn’t count these as flaws, but the film does operate on a deliberately anarchic and detached wavelength that is somewhat common in a lot of moody arthouse films, and this film in particular is not afraid to lean on some of those same stylistic clichés, but it works for the most part because it’s able to connect thematically.
Ultimately, on top of being a thoughtful mood piece, Monos is just a really excellent thriller. It’s visceral, it’s gritty, the violence hits hard, and the survivalist element that comes into play when the characters enter the jungle is just as riveting as all the evocative brutality of their bizarre mountaintop utopia. The performances is uniformly excellent from the cast, each bringing so much empathy and vulnerability to the material, and perfectly capturing the very different ways each of them respond to their challenges, and how some eventually turn on one another. It’s an effortlessly watchable and fascinating film, both beautiful and disturbing, but also with a lot on its mind about the world that kids like these characters live in.