Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Beasts of No Nation
2015 · Cary Joji Fukunaga · Beasts of No Nation on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch how small Agu is kept against the landscape and armed men. (camera)
Fukunaga shot the film himself, and he keeps composing the boy as a small figure inside a wide frame crowded with adults, weapons, and jungle.
Payoff: The scale does the work before any dialogue does. You keep seeing how little of this situation belongs to him.
Count how long the camera goes without cutting during a firefight. (cutting)
Fukunaga stays close to Agu's eyeline and lets takes run. The most cited battle plays out in one sustained take that carries you through the chaos without relief.
Payoff: With no cut to step behind, you stay in the scene exactly as long as the boy does.
Listen to Agu's voiceover and the grammar he uses. (sound)
The narration keeps the pidgin-inflected first person of Iweala's novel. Agu addresses God and his mother in a child's syntax about things no child should be describing.
Payoff: The voice keeps a child's moral accounting running underneath everything the camera shows you.
Notice where the palette stops looking natural. (light)
The palette is naturalistic for most of the film, with a few stretches pushed into colors that match nothing else in it. Nobody remarks on it.
Payoff: The color carries a state of mind that no line of dialogue states.
Watch where the Commandant stands when he addresses the boys. (staging)
Elba's authority is staged as theater. The men and boys are arranged as an audience and an army at once, with him raised or centered in front of them.
Payoff: Belonging is what gets sold in these scenes. The blocking shows you how the sale is made.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch how small the film keeps Agu inside the frame. The scale tells you what is being done to him.