Netflix’s Oscar bid with first movie release

As I squinted in the sunlight, taking deep breaths – really – I tried to decide what that meant about the film, the uncompromising story of a child soldier who is forced to fight a civil war in an unnamed African country.

TheWrap: You’ve been involved with this material for a long time, haven’t you?

But now Netflix is upping its game again. Beasts will premiere in selected theatres in the United States and other markets (but not in Canada) as well as online Friday. We compare the child performances from Jacob Tremblay in “Room” and Abraham Attah in Cary Fukunaga’s “Beasts of No Nation”, which is a tougher and less uplifting film. The boys attempt to sell the appliance as an “imagination” TV, lyrically allowing the viewer to enter a community trying to exist on the edge of chaos. The Commandant offers the bleakest of consolations to young Agu: kill those who have killed or hurt your own. Agu and his family are eventually separated when the village is run over. The path set forth by the Commandant is compelling and disturbing, a circle of power and cruelty that ends in exhaustion or death, if it ends at all. Jamaica Kincaid would always say something like, “OK, if you’re writing about a farmer, and you’re talking about soil, and you say the soil tastes like X-do you know what the soil tastes like?” “A boy has hands to strangle”. We’re dropped into this foreign environment, thrashing around for something familiar, and just when we’re about to drown, the guy from The Wire shows up as a comforting father figure (in this case the “Commandant”, a leader in the NDF, the Native Defense Force). As the story moves forward the casual violence is never desensitizing, but made more horrific because of the normalcy.

Not that “True Detective” ended up being any easier to make, or more psychologically relaxing, but it gave me a few space to think about it, and develop more as a filmmaker. Or that Fukunaga understands action.

The script is adapted from the 2005 novel of the same name by Uzodinma Iweala. The novel had a child’s perspective, which the movie tries to recreate but not as successfully. And the more buzz the film gets, the more it will help Netflix in its efforts to attract customers from their main French competitor, Canalplay.

The four largest theater chains in the U.S.-AMC, Regal, Cinemark and Carmike-refused to screen the movie as a stand against the rising popularity of video on demand, Variety reported earlier this year.

Netflix had expected 66.61 million total paid members for the quarter. This is a film much more concerned with the business of indoctrination than the details of whatever conflict Agu is involved in.

With China, Hong Kong and Singapore on the horizon, it’s no surprise that Netflix’s next set of releases – the sequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a Keith Richards rock-doc and Brad Pitt’s next political film – have global appeal. Those numbers, coupled with the announcement that rates for its most popular plans will rise $1/month beginning next year, temporarily sparked a drastic 14 percent drop in share price. And then the movie invites us to wonder what happens to the child who is now a murderer. Netflix is banking an very bad lot on it.