Alejandro Landes plunges you into vicious mountain clouds deep in Latin America, where a guerrilla group of wild teens have been tasked with safeguarding Doctora (Julianne Nicholson), an American prisoner of war.
We’re first introduced to the rebel group on a spectacular mountaintop as they undergo relentless training exercises. They bear characterful noms de guerre: Rambo, Boom-Boom, Smurf, Bigfoot and Wolf and are about to learn the complications of war, lust, love and death – the hard way.
Coexisting around a striking stone bunker the commandos create their own rules and hierarchy as they smear themselves in mud and create their own tribal Capoeira-infused pseudo-rituals. The actors themselves are a real motley crew; the majority are untrained, whereas Bigfoot played by Moisés Arias (Hannah Montana) has ventured into Hollywood before.
Their rawness is vastly important to Monos as nature is often the enemy in their journey as the mysterious force entitled ‘The Organisation’ covertly watch over the teenage squad coded ‘Monos’ (which translates from the Greek word for ‘one’ or ‘alone’).
Initially the group have some time on their hands before being violently driven out of the mountains to the jungle by an abrupt gun blazon ambush. Landes uses this time to create beautifully genuine scenes of sexual experimentation, adolescent innocence and vivid nature all laced with dose of psychedelia.
Mica Levi’s haunting score injects fear and tension as the armed teens head deeper into the remote jungle. Levi’s electronica and timpani suggests an outcome of little hope for the haphazard mission. Much like Guerra’s 2015 masterpiece ‘Embrace of the Serpent’, we soon learn how harsh and brutal the jungle can be to a novice as the fatigued commando’s desperately attempt to transport a deteriorating and maltreated Doctora.
Although Monos is a micro-narrative in the endless chaotic civil war in Colombia, the environment the bandits cover is an atemporal world, a place with no specific time or place. This makes one become just as misplaced and muddled as the captive as their journey descends into extreme animalistic violence whilst the elements constantly battle against them. A severed pigs head is the first real homage to Golding’s Lord of the Flies – Landes has previously remarked upon the power and legacy of this classic novel on his subconscious.
The most alluring character, Rambo, played by Sofia Buenaventura, is almost genderless in this tale. Landes purposefully doesn’t reveal her gender and has mentioned during screenings that half the audience experience her as a boy and the other a girl. Throughout the relentless failures and conflicts within the faction Rambo manages to remain the most empathic as the others rapidly become increasingly feral and manipulative.
Monos is a stunning cinematic voyage that presents violence, torture and hope in their most honest and organic forms. Landes’s surreal and magical project is a twisted dreamlike masterpiece that will not go unnoticed.
