38 | Sight&Sound | November 2019
ALEJANDRO LANDES MONOS
he admits that the starting point was the Colom-
bian ‘conflict’: “It was a shadow war, a war with-
out a frontline during which factions and alignments
changed.” His view is that this kind of warfare is now
prevalent: “It’s fresh for our generation that most wars
are being fought by covert operations. In America if you
ask someone on the street what side they are on in Syria,
they don’t know. Watching a war film with a frontline
and flags, you have more clarity about where you stand.”
Landes wanted the opposite. “People are attracted to
making films about World War II because there seems
to be a very clear moral line as to who’s good and who’s
bad. In war today, particularly from the back line, there’s
a lot more moral ambiguity to explore.”
REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE
Ambiguity is rife throughout the film and for Landes,
this not only reflects the experience of war now but
allows the audience to identify more closely with the
characters: “You don’t know if you’re in the future or the
past, if the characters’ ideologies are on the left or the
right. Sometimes the gender of the characters is not clear.
What I liked about that is that it forces you to leave your
prejudices at the door.”
Colombia is only now experiencing a fragile peace after
more than 50 years of conflict. “The peace agreement calls
for guerrillas to lay down arms and return to civilian life,
but will they be accepted?” Landes wonders. “People feel
more comfortable if they have all the information in front
of them. No, thank you. Here you can’t latch on to the
things we generally use to judge people. I really wanted to
parachute the audience into the situation so they couldn’t
come into it through the ideology. If you knew that the
kidnapped woman was a CIA operative, you might be
less sympathetic to her, or if she was an NGO worker you
might be more.”
Provoking a sense of discomfort through the style of the
film was also important to him: “The kids have such fresh
faces and give such natural performances but then they
regularly break the fourth wall. I wanted to juxtapose a
high degree of stylisation with realism so the film doesn’t
allow you to classify it.”
GUERRILLAS IN THE MIST
Landes’s first film was a documentary: Cocalero (2007),
about Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. His
second, Porfirio (2011), was a highly sensual docufiction
portrait of a paralysed man. Despite its surreal leanings,
Monos is, like those films, very much grounded in fact: “I
read many accounts of politicians and NGO workers that
had been kidnapped and their day-to-day guards were
kids. Even in the case of Ingrid Betancourt Pulecio, a very
high-profile Colombian politician who was kidnapped,
she was taken care of by kids for a few days. The cheapest
way for rebel armies to take care of their hostages was to
give them to those on the lowest rung of the ladder.”
Landes also spent a lot of time in reintegration pro-
grammes designed to help former guerrillas prepare for
a return to civilian life. That is where he encountered
Wilson Salazar, who had joined a rebel army at the age of
11, rising to its most senior ranks before deserting when
he was 24. He became the film’s military adviser before
Landes convinced him to play the Messenger.
To recruit the monos, 25 Colombian kids, from a pool
of 800, were chosen to take part in a five-week training
camp high in the Andes. There, as well as doing improv
acting exercises, they received idiosyncratic military
training (waking at 4am to strange calls, carrying weap-
ons in unusual ways). With the exception of Moisés
Arias, who plays Big Foot, no one had professional acting
experience. Landes observed them performing both in-
dividually and as a squad before making his selection.
“It was important for me to see the chemistry between
them but also get to know them. How else do you get a
raw emotional performance from a 17-year-old kid like
Deiby Rueda, who plays Smurf, and who comes from one
of the toughest neighbourhoods in Medellín, and who
isn’t used to showing any type of vulnerability?”
JUNGLE FEVER
“I never wanted landscape shots without characters in
them. I was very firm about the landscapes never looking
like postcards,” Landes explains. “They had to mirror the
interior state of the characters. When you see the monos
in the mountains there’s a very clear sense of scale. As
otherworldly as the scenes are, the characters look small
and there’s still a sense of innocence and promise to them.
When you start going into the canopy of the jungle, the
sense of scale gets lost and the group starts fragmenting,
so the landscape is part of the narrative arc.”
Shooting in such remote locations (which were until
recently inaccessible because of the fighting between
guerrillas and paramilitaries) came with a range of chal-
lenges; plans to shoot on 35mm were abandoned as too
complicated. The forms of transport the cast and crew
took say it all: helicopter, mule, kayak and raft – and
later, a stretcher and ambulance when Landes had to be
rushed out of the jungle with suspected appendicitis.
Their only form of communication with the outside
world was a satellite phone they couldn’t use because it
was too expensive.
“I had intense discussions with all the crew: we’d story-
boarded and had a shot list, but when you’re 4,000 metres
up a mountain or deep in the jungle, you sometimes just
have to take advantage of what’s actually happening in
front of you.”
Monos is released in UK cinemas on 25 October
People are attracted to making WWII films because
there seems to be a clear line as to who’s good and
bad. In war today, there’s a lot more moral ambiguity
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIERS
By keeping the characters’
histories and political
affiliations deliberately
hidden, director Alejandro
Landes (below) hopes
viewers will be forced to leave
their prejudices at the door
Reviewed on
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PRODUCTION
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VERSION
Monos, 3
