Beasts of No Nation (2015)

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Writers:  Cary Joji Fukunaga, Uzodinma Iweala
Cast:       Abraham Attah, Idris Elba, Emmanuel Affadzi

A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country. The film is based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala and was shot in Ghana. 

When you watch these kind of films you do get into it with some weariness of having to attend a social studies class. These things are handled the best way when done cinematically without making you feel like being lectured on. I can watch documentaries for that. Beasts of No Nation is in the capable hands of Cary Joji Fukunaga, best known for True Detective Season One (Hate the fact that I've to specify the season), who also did 'Sin Nombre' and 'Jane Eyre' both of which were really good as well. He handles the task of adapting the novel to the screen by giving it a Terence Malick treatment (think The Thin Red Line), albeit with a focused approach by telling it from the perspective of the child soldier character played excellently by Abraham Attah. Idris Elba plays the role of his Commandant who turns out to be quite in the middle bracket of the Chain of Command. We can contrast the film with the shallow social media trend that was 'Stop Kony' campaign which was about surface level deep. 

It was very easy for the film to hog headlines with it being the first Netflix produced one and with it being simul-released on their network. Many big Cinema chains in the US boycotted the film as it violated the 90 window release exclusivity for the theaters. I do believe there is a need for that sort of exclusivity since a film is almost always best watched on a big fucking screen with an audience. But they should get with the times and reduce that exclusivity to maybe 2-4 weeks. Anyway, it is a glorious debut from Netflix.

Overall it is a great watch and excellent performances from all concerned. There is a single shot tracking scene that will rival his similar shot from 'True Detective' in the middle point of the film. In the latter, it did give a show-off vibe, while in this one it adds something significant to the scene and story. Everything is done in a matter of fact way without having to manipulate the audience. The events in are patently sufficient. It is not a matter of choice but of survival. It will be interesting to see if it gets any love from the Academy but I would put a probability of close to zero for that. As for Fukunaga, please come back for True Detective Season Three.  

Rating: 4/5

                                                                         

Jane Eyre (2011)

Director: Cary Fukunaga
Writers:  Charlotte Bronte (Novel), Moira Buffini
Cast:       Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench

Jane Eyre is a mousy governess who softens the heart of her employer but soon discovers that he is hiding a terrible secret. 

Charlotte Bronte's novel from early 19th century has been adapted around 24 times and this is the latest one. In this adaptation they have played up the dark Gothic feel of the Thornfield Hall and its owner Rochester played by Michael Fassbender. Unlike in the novel, the story is told in a non-linear fashion through flashbacks. The point at which the film starts is Jane Eyre fearfully fleeing from the castle and almost ending up dead. This sets the tone for how we watch as the story unfolds since we are always dreading about how their relationship goes. I was almost glad when I eventually found out why she had fled from her employer and after that the story is almost straightforward. It is ultimately a very predictable and soap operatic story made far more interesting in this version of it through the non-linear narration and the overall darkness which was anyways there in the original novel. Great performances from all involved, especially Mia and Fassbender playing the two lead characters.

I was reminded of '12 Years a slave' by around half way point of the film with strange similarities between some of the characters in both the films. If one really thinks about it, it is almost the same story (In relation to Fassbender and Lupita's characters and their relation). For me the most interesting character in 12 Years a slave was the one portrayed by Michael Fassbender anyways.

I have been seeking out Cary Fukunaga's works after seeing 'True Detective' and both 'Sin Nombre' and 'Jane Eyre' turned out to be excellent films. He is certainly one to look forward to. He will be serving as Executive Producer for season two of 'True Detective'. It will be interesting to see how it turns out because I think having single director for the entire season really made a difference to its quality.

Rating: 4/5

True Detective (2014)

Creator:  Nic Pizzolatto
Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga
Cast:       Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Monaghan

The lives of two detectives get entangled over a span of 17 years as they hunt a for a serial killer in Louisiana.

The season one of the anthology format HBO series True Detective ended yesterday night/today morning crashing HBO Go in the process. It is the ultimate opposite to the Netflix produced House of Cards and its binge release model where the entire season is released in one go. House of cards is a great watch as long as you don't get much time to think about it since there isn't much depth to the story. True Detective is something which need time for the viewer to think, chew on and digest and the frenzy it has created in the internet over the last 9 weeks is testament to that. The brilliant title credits, existential nature of the dialogs, the mythical universe of Carcosa and the Yellow King and at the end of it all you are left with a feeling that they only scratched the surface with their investigation: which I think is very much intentional.

The interviews that Nic Pizzolatto has given over the last month helps a great deal in interpreting or confirming your interpretation of the season. The idea of Carcosa and Yellow King comes from Robert W. Chambers book called 'The King in  Yellow' which got a sales boost because of the TV show. It is a collection of ten short stories and the first four of them mention a play called 'The King in Yellow' which induces despair or madness in those who read it. In similar vein the case ultimately don't implicate any people higher up in the food chain and one feels that those who mattered escaped at the end of it. The detectives know it and we the audience feel it. Marty's daughter Audrey storyline is not taken up and there are many intentional loose ends which ultimately is the whole point.

Pizzolatto has also spoken at great length about storytelling and its importance to mankind. The penetration of religion is proof of that and the creator himself is an atheist who grew up in a very religious environment. In the show Rust starts off as a nihilistic atheist and ends on an optimistic spiritual note with the brilliant line at the end:“Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winning.” The weight of the world or the universal truth seems to be on his shoulder in the earlier episodes and by the end of the season he seemed to let it all go and find comfort in being spiritual which is essentially what religion do for a lot of people. When you are faced with questions, ugly truths and purposelessness, then faith goes a long way in solving all that by ignoring all the above said things. The same is with the case: they didn't get anyone directly connected to the senator and had to be contend with the dead end that is the death of the lawn mower man. The same thing happened with Reggie Ledoux in 1995 who before his death utters that these things will continue to happen. Rust also says the same thing during the interrogation scene where he goes 'time is a flat circle'. 

Another one of my interpretation is to do with the show itself. In the first five-six episodes it was a real genre bender when it comes to the buddy-cop investigative series. By the end it kind of tailed off which again I think was intentional. One can compare it with way the show ended with the allusion to the age old story of light Vs darkness as opposed to the real world situation of moral ambiguity. 

I will most certainly be revisiting the whole season soon looking for more clues. It is good that it will be having a different story and different characters next season. It can be really seen as an eight hour length feature film and the fact that it had just one single director unlike other normal TV series made a big difference in terms of its quality. In what is described as a golden age of television, I think it will be quite difficult to top this season of True Detective.

Rating: 5/5

Sin Nombre (2009)

Director: Cary Fukunaga
Writer:    Cary Fukunaga
Cast:       Paulina Gaitan, Marco Antonio Aguirre, Leonardo Alonso
Language: Spanish

An Honduran teenager Sayra is making a trip to cross the US border through Mexico on a train along with her father, and her fate gets mixed up with a gangster boy who is marked to die.

This is Director/Cinematographer Cary Fukunaga's feature film debut and I decided to watch it after discovering him through HBO's 'True Detective' which is amazing by the way. It is an adventure road/rail film done in a gritty manner capturing the harrowing experience of illegals trying to reach the US. It is shot beautifully without compromising the situation it is depicting. The performances of main characters are very understated and it is a very good watch. The initial half hour of the film where they show the initiation of a boy into the gang with shitty hand gestures was a bit iffy. 

Rating: 3.5/5