By Muhammad Muzammal – Arts and Entertainment Assistant Editor

Capturing the delicate balance between the poetic and the literal, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s “Beasts of No Nation” is a chilling film about the aimlessness of war, as eclipsed through the senseless nature of violence.

The film follows the journey of its young protagonist Agu (Abraham Attah), who, in the beginning of the film, lives a simple joyous life as a fun-loving teenager in an unnamed African country.

Agu’s life is turned upside down when a radical group of armed men decide to take over Agu’s colony, killing nearly all its citizens.

Fukunaga films a powerful action sequence when Agu runs from armed soldiers with his brother. The tracking shot follows Agu’s path and as his brother is shot, we stay with Agu, following his footsteps.

As Agu narrowly escapes his own death, he comes across a guerrilla battalion in the Native Defense Force (NDF). Led by the scary yet warm Commandant (Idris Elba), the NDF is made up of child soldiers who are trained to be ruthless but receive a sense of twisted love and affection by their leader.

The Commandant saves Agu’s life when an NDF soldier finds him in a forest. For better or for worse, The Commandant recruits Agu.

Following his rescue, we watch as people are mercilessly killed and those killing are being rewarded. As the body count increases, the innocence of Agu slowly dissipates, until there is nothing left but the desire to be reunited with his only living parent, his mother.

In the film’s most affecting scene, Agu invades a building with other NDF soldiers and comes across an older woman whom he mistakes to be his mother. Agu embraces her, screaming “Mother.” When he realizes she’s not his mother, Agu steps back – disturbed and angry – only to walk back and shoot her in the head.

The sequence is filmed in one take, immersing us in perhaps Agu’s worst moment of agony, where his innocence is completely obliterated and his heart crosses over to a dark, horrific place. It’s a scene that beats any blockbuster action movie scene, both in fluidity and emotional impact.

As Agu continues his journey as a solider, another theme arises making “Beasts of No Nation” a stand out amongst its “war is bad” counterparts.

Although we immediately identify with Agu at the beginning of the film, we feel heartbroken when he kills civilians and shoots other soldiers.

Agu’s loneliness and longing for a familial connection, coupled with how he lovingly – at first – looks up to the Commandant, allows us to see his violent actions as a way of joining a family he doesn’t have anymore.

The fact that Agu kills the amount of people he does makes it so tragic. And because he is so easy to identify with at the beginning, we are not only a spectator to his actions, we are him, and therefore, we feel broken.

This is a result of one of the smarter choices of the film.

Fukunaga smartly does not keep a distance between his audience and his soldier hero. This minimal distance allows us to feel Agu’s pain, instead of canceling him out when he decides to kill.

Attah gives a riveting, powerful performance as Agu, joining Idris Elba who holds his own as a killing machine full of the sociopathic tendencies you’d expect a blood-hungry guerrilla warfare leader to have.

Fukunaga– who also served as writer and cinematographer– films “Beasts of No Nation” in dry colors that recall photojournalism from the 1970s, giving the film a journalistic aesthetic.

Fukunaga’s imagery is also poetic, as he catches shots of nature that gives the film a transcendentalist feel, reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s film “The Tree of Life.”

“Beasts of No Nation” is essential cinema. There are hundreds of thousands of African child soldiers and the point of the film is not to relish in the violence it shows. It’s to look at the horror that goes on in this world to this very day, and to realize it could happen to anyone.

As mentioned earlier, amongst the film’s greatest choices is to make Agu so identifiable. This boy could be you or me.