Arts & Culture
STANTON | Why Bother With Something New?
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By CHRIS STANTON
Over the weekend, I found myself compelled to watch Netflix’s latest original content, Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation. Acquired in a groundbreaking distribution deal this summer, Beasts is a bold choice for the service’s first piece of feature-length content. It tells the terrifying — yet all too relevant — story of a child rebel soldier named Agu (Ghanaian actor Abraham Attah, in a brilliant debut) in a nameless African country, brought up under the brainwashing tutelage of his Commandant (Idris Elba). While I didn’t expect light viewing, Fukunaga is entirely merciless in his depiction of Agu’s harsh realities. The imagery is inescapable and unrelenting; the kind of stuff that keeps people up at night.