The horrors of war have been dissected in film from a number of different entry points. But when taking a broad look at the root of the conflict with a widescreen view, there is usually, at the core, a tangible sense of good versus evil that is being reckoned with. The new film “Monos,” by Colombian director Alejandro Lanes, takes a sobering look into the complicated ways that the majority of wars are being fought around the world: with no clear battlefield or defined sides.
The film, which just took home the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, focuses on eight Spanish-speaking teenage soldiers (Monos) who are stationed in an unspecified jungle region and left in charge of an American prisoner of war known simply as “Doctora.” The children — who have been given the nicknames “Bigfoot,” “Rambo,” “Wolf,” “Lady,” “Swede,” “Smurf,” “Boom Boom” and “Dog — receive orders from an older soldier known as “The Messenger” handed down from the leaders of a guerilla army called “The Organization.”
Photo: NEON
In between visits from “The Messenger” where they film ransom videos of Doctora to send back home, the children experiment with alcohol, hook up and generally act their age for a bunch of kids left unsupervised with a stocked arsenal of firearms. Without giving any important plot points away, the film plays out like a combination of “The Lord of the Flies” and “Apocalypse Now,” where the insecurities and doubts that go hand-in-hand with growing up have no place in such a grave life-or-death situation. The real battle that plays out is the one that eventually tears the group apart in the heart of the jungle. Why should they care about one raging out on the front lines?
“I just loved the script. As you can imagine, it was unlike anything I had ever read,” says actress Julianne Nicholson, who plays Doctora.
“It felt like a very exciting prospect to me. To make a foreign film, to go somewhere else, to do a film in another language and to work with non-actors. I had watched Alejandro’s film ‘Porfirio’ which I thought was really interesting and beautiful and spare and moving. I felt really excited to be a part of it.”
Nicholson had been reeled in by the unique perspective that Landes offered in his script as to what modern war looks like. “The wars that are happening, which are many around the world right now, there aren’t clear lines with how things are being fought,” the actress explains. “That’s very scary to me. So to show the unknown felt right.”
To achieve an authentic dynamic between Nicholson’s character and the Monos, Landes went through an extensive auditioning process casting children who, for the most part, had no acting experience.
“I expected having that experience would be different every time. In this particular case, it was pretty amazing and I think totally lends itself to creating that world and the dynamic between Doctora and the Monos,” says Nicholson of working with so many first-time actors. “I have to say, I keep saying how amazing all the kids are, and they truly are. They have no preconceived ideas about what the scene really is or what it’s supposed to look like. They know what the words are. Alejandro would tell them right before what was happening, but they didn’t read the whole script. So there was no expectations and so they would just show up. With that said, it was Alejandro who really did the work of creating performances and drawing performances out of these kids.”
The role of Doctora is defined more as war-time collateral than as someone with a certain political agenda, and the film and Nicholson’s performance make you sympathize with her situation on a human level — regardless of whether she is on the right side of the conflict. But as Nicholson began to understand, that ambiguity is exactly what Landes wanted to emphasize.
“When we started talking about the script, I had a lot of practical questions,” says Nicholson. “Who is Doctora? What’s her job? How long has she been there? Why is she kidnapped? [Landes] said, ‘Look, we don’t have to worry about all of those particular details.’ He said to think about it like a fairy tale. It’s a more universal story. We don’t need to specify it in that way. It’s a bigger story than one person’s.”
