Beasts of No Nation Film Analysis

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Motifs are very important in this film and are used throughout this movie and one that is common is singing/rapping. We see that whenever people are in groups, like in church, or when people are sitting around a campfire that they seem to entertain themselves and bond together with singing/rapping. Another place where singing/rapping is seen in the commandant pumping up his soldiers before surging to take the bridge. Another motif we see is religion, it plays a big part in Agu’s life before the war and after the war. We see early on that Agu isn’t a big fan of church but as the movie goes on we see Agu start to lean on god and even gets angry when he feels that god isn’t helping him. Lastly at the end of the movie we see Agu sitting in a chair looking angry and at the start of the movie we see almost the exact same visual at the beginning of the movie with Agu’s grandfather. The last scene that we see dehumanization influence Agu is after he surrenders and the UN moves him to a new location. He says that he is old and the women he is speaking to is very young because he has fought in a war and she doesn’t know what war is. The way he says that she doesn’t even know what war is proved that he has seen so much and done so many bad things that he feels he is a bad person.

Beasts of No Nation is a film that takes you on an emotional rollercoaster from start to finish. The use of African Culture is well done and the songs and sounds of this movie add to an enriching experience. Cary Fukunaga even went a step further in his film, referencing a famous photographer, Richard Mosse, with his use of infrared in the village slaughter scene. The director along with the rest of the staff did a great job with the editing and cinematography of Beasts of No Nation that truly adds to the experience of the film overall. Beasts of No Nation was a very complex film that used multiple different camera angles, effects, sounds, and motion to help convey the plot.