Part Lord of the Flies and part Apocalypse Now, Alejandro Landes’ Monos, screening at the BFI London Film Festival, creates a dream-like atmosphere while holding the reasons for our young soldiers’ mission at a distance.
As the clouds roll in under the summit of an unknown mountain somewhere in Latin America, a group of teenagers, known as Boom Boom, Rambo, Dog, Smurf, Lady, Swede, Bigfoot, and Wolf, stand staring down at the clouds. Each one is schooled in the art of combat by a short, mysterious man before being gifted a cow for fresh milk. Meanwhile, hidden in the caves beneath their feet sits Doctora (Julianne Nicholson), an American woman held against her will. So begins Alejandro Landes’ beautiful yet haunting tale of young people left to their own devices in a haze of hormones.
Monos is visually stunning as we walk alongside our tribe of ‘lost kids’ through the mountainous landscape above the rolling clouds, before descending into an animalistic jungle. Here, the tribal belonging of the peer group replaces the world outside, with those who cannot commit, isolated and hunted. Their only real option for survival is the peer group – a message that resonates with gang membership and conflict in cities far away from the events at play in Monos.
Part Lord of the Flies and part Apocalypse Now, Landes creates a dream-like atmosphere while holding the reasons for our young soldier’s mission at a distance. Monos is a study of peer influence, tribal belonging, control and adult indifference – the group’s culture and practices at odds with the cities of their birth. Themes of gender fluidity, sexuality, fear, and unquestioning belief surround each conversation and interaction, the dystopian atmosphere of the camp leading its members down a dark and slippery slope of fragmentation and tribal violence.
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