Monos

Phrases such as "Like Lord of the Flies", "Apocalypse Now on shrooms", "In the place of warfare are bizarre rituals, horny hook-ups and campfire raves", and "a tense, off-kilter deep dive into corrupted innocence that never quite goes where you think it will" lowered my expectation of Monos.

Monos has the most diverse set of actors I have seen in a long time. Which is handy in an ensemble film, where 8 to 10 characters are sharing the spotlight and dialogue is sometimes sparse. Eight child soldiers are left on a bare mountain top to guard an American hostage by their roving commander (who is shorter than some of his young soldiers). The teens belong to a rebel group whose ideology and aims are never explained. The views from this vantage point above the clouds are spectacular. But there is not a lot of soldiering to do, so plenty of time bored teenage mischief. But in the second half of the film, things change gear. The soldiers and their hostage move down into the rain forest. We only get vistas from drone footage, the characters inhabit a much more damp and claustrophobic world where you can rarely see more than 2 or 3 metres in any direction. Group dynamics change when their prisoner makes a break for freedom. Loyalties are challenged and the body count mounts.

We are tempted to take sides but is anyone on the side of the angels? Director Alejandro Landes keeps us guessing and keeps reminding us that these are both kids and killers. While not a great film it was better than I expected when I found my seat. Visually interesting, thrilling, twisted and morally ambiguous.

🎥

Ian's rating 3/5

A Perfect Day

A slice-of-life drama, a Perfect Day is just what its title suggests - a day in the life of some aid workers in the Balkans in 1995, a day when a lot of the things that could go wrong, do.  The story centres around the search for rope to remove a body from the local well. Benicio del Toro and Tim Robbins star as the hardened long-time aid workers with Melanie Thierry playing a recent recruit. Olga Kurylenko plays a conflict evaluator. They have assorted adventures together including getting lost and having to spend the night in their utility trucks.

The film's not especially deep but does give realistic insights into potential hazards of that kind of work - lack of equipment, bureaucracy getting in the way of progress, weapons doing the talking and unexpectedly gruesome sights. The characters are likeable, the scenery is excellent, the dialogue (and indeed the film) is darkly comic. I enjoyed the recurring cow theme, the soundtrack and the journey the film took me on.

Anne's rating 3/5 Ian's rating 5/5

A War

A Danish military outpost gets involved in the local community, as does the Taliban, things get messy and people die. Like Tobias Lindholm’s previous film A Highjacking he keeps parallel story lines running and interlacing, using international phone calls filmed from both ends. One story line in familiar territory (Denmark) and the other in exotic territory (in this case Afghanistan).

While focusing in close on the banalities of his character's lives Tobias Lindholm gets us to identify with people even if their situations are completely foreign to us. This tight focusing on particular characters also clearly divides the cast (and the world) into us and them. He then jerks the curtain aside to expose our own prejudices.

I didn't find this film as tense or as interesting as A Highjacking. The domestic life in Denmark was boring and the message of the film was hammered home with the subtlety of a hammer blow. Who are the NATO soldiers in Afghanistan actually fighting for? Does it work? Who are they trying to protect? What, if anything, is the life of an Afghan civilian worth? But the film was well acted and the characters believable, even if the message is one of despair.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

Diplomacy

How was Paris liberated in 1944 with so little damage? It is something I have never thought about long enough to research. So I watched Diplomacy from a position of ignorance. Since I watched it I have done some research and realised that depending on which version of events you believe, this film may make you angry. Though if you are in that camp, the advertising for the film would be warning to stay away.

Diplomacy is based on a play and compresses the events of August 1944 into one day for dramatic effect. The Germans are in retreat in France after the D-day landing in June that year, and the Allies on the outskirts of Paris. General Dietrich von Choltitz is under orders from Hitler that:

"The city must not fall into the enemy's hand except lying in complete debris."

The engineers have prepared demolition charges on the bridges and major buildings and are awaiting orders to blow the place up. As we know this didn't happen we are confronted with: how were the Germans stopped?

Before dawn while General Choltitz is giving orders for the final preparations at his HQ in the Hotel Meurice he gets an unannounced visitor, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish Consul. The neutral diplomat has come to talk the general into disobeying Hitler and saving the city (and its inhabitants). Nordling's only weapon is his powers of persuasion. Not just to talk the general out of blowing up the city but also to avoid being thrown out into the street by a busy general preparing for the approaching Allied forces.

The conversations between the two men are punctuated by events outside (reports from subordinates, phone calls to Berlin, breakfast served by a maid). This film could have been subtitled "Two old men in a hotel room", but this is a hang over from the play it is based on and not a criticism. Each man brings out arguments and counter arguments as preparations for the demolition reach completion and the Allies get closer. The battle inside the hotel room seems more vital than the fighting in the streets.

Whether or not you believe that Choltitz or Nordling (or neither) was the saviour of Paris this is a great illustration of the power of argument and how to use persuasion from multiple angles. Both lead actors are eloquent advocates for their point of view and while polite to each other, use their rhetorical powers to the full.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 4/5

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan is the longest film title at the film festival and I managed to forget to write a review of it. It is the story of the New Zealand Army in Afghanistan, or rather it is the story about trying to find out about the New Zealand Army in Afghanistan.

New Zealand is proud of it's tradition of sending troops overseas to fight in other peoples' wars. Starting in 1899 when Prime Minister Richard Seddon offered to send mounted riflemen to South Africa to fight Boers (aka Afrikaners), and was eager to get them to South Africa ahead of the Australians. While the New Zealand government of the day didn't have the power to declare war, it was autonomous enough to have its own armed forces and decide on their use. There was also a sense of competition to please London among what were to become the Dominions. The situation was much the same in 1914 when New Zealand invaded German Samoa as part of a pre-WWI agreement with Britain.

More celebrated is New Zealand's contribution to the Anglo-French invasion of the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli in 1915. New Zealand also contributed to the more successful invasion of the Ottoman Empire in the Palestine Campaign but mostly Kiwis died in World War I trying to repel the German army from France and Belgium. By World War II New Zealand could choose to declare war and again Kiwis mostly fought on the other side of the world, around the Mediterranean, helping Britain with another war. Since then New Zealand moved from helping Britain to helping the US, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfortunately the New Zealand public has never been as keen on fighting America's wars as it was at fighting Britain's wars, which is the nub of this documentary.

He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan contrasts what the New Zealand government and military tell us about what the NZ Army has been doing in Afghanistan (which is what normally appears in the news here) with what journalists in Afghanistan (most notably Jon Stephenson) have found out by talking to Afghans and NZ soldiers. Generally the official story is that our soldiers are rebuilding Bamyan province, and the SAS are training Afghan special forces. Unfortunately closer investigation shows that aid projects are a minor role of New Zealand's Provincial Reconstruction Team, and the SAS is involved in night raids, with or without Afghan forces. They have killed civilians and transferred prisoners to known torturers. The film makers (and Jon Stephenson) are very careful to never criticise Kiwi soldiers, making a clear distinction between them and the top brass and politicians who decide what they do in Afghanistan.

The documentary not only highlights the difference between reality and government and army spin. It also touches on the smear campaign against Jon Stephenson for pointing out the truth. Just as importantly it asks why New Zealand has troops in Afghanistan more than 10 years after Al-Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan. Should New Zealand be so complicit in the scope creep of the America's invasion of Afghanistan? Is it time to re-evaluate New Zealand's love affair with other people's wars? Which, since 1899, have been fought with one eye on pleasing a larger and more powerful country on the other side of the world.

Ian's rating 4/5