That Record Breaking Ensemble Nomination for Beasts of No Nation

In the flurry of SAG nominations, and the shocking realization that Spotlight was the only film being talked about to win Best Picture to get a SAG nomination, the equally shocking news about Beats of No Nation getting in seemed to drift pass everyone, as though it was an expected thing. It was not only unexpected, it was unheard of. Surprises like Straight Outta Compton and Trumbo do happen, but Beasts of Nation was a film that survived and flourished on word of mouth and devoted advocacy of prominent figures in Hollywood. This is the first time in Oscar history that a film that opened almost simultaneously on VOD has come this close to being nominated for Best Picture.

Beasts of No Nation, one of the best films of the year, has not been a top favorite of film critics, weirdly enough. Actually, it was mostly ignored by many critics. They tend to represent, for the most part, one kind of taste – those movies that appeal to (usually) white males, aged 25 through 40. If a film doesn’t appeal to that demographic it won’t be a critics darling. It’s a miracle, frankly, that so many films this year passed muster with them even though their plots centered on female characters, which isn’t usually the case. This monolith of a mostly specific kind of taste has really made films about women difficult to break through, not to mention films by and about people of color. It isn’t that critics are sexist or racist – it’s just that we’re dealing with one kind of tastes and the variations within that one kind of taste.

The industry, though, aren’t film critics, although to they tend to take their lead from the stack of films the critics approve, weeding out many films and only watching films they’ve heard were great. That might have happened to some extent with the acting nominations among some of the 2,000 people on SAG’s nominating committee, but it clearly did not determine which films they put in ensemble. Beasts of No Nation getting there had everything to do with the power of the film itself, not to mention it being so readily available to watch, not to mention the many who advocated for it, including Ben Affleck, Scarlett Johansson, Sally Field, Bill Condon and many others. Because the critics didn’t step up, this crucial segment of industry is telling the rest of the industry to watch THIS movie, to pay attention to THIS film, that THIS film was worth their time.

The other interesting thing about both Straight Outta Compton and Beasts of No Nation is that they both feature all-black casts, with key roles filled by relative unknowns. The SAG ensemble tends to be driven, for the most part, by films with big casts of well known actors. The complaint has been lodged at them many times, that they pick films with popular stars in them. And maybe some of them do to a certain extent. Spotlight, the Big Short and Trumbo all fit that bill. But how do you explain a film like Beasts, which stars one Idris Elba, another brilliant but unknown until now, Abraham Attah and then this limited list of names in its cast – just three names:

ABRAHAM ATTAH
KURT EGYIAWAN
IDRIS ELBA

The other casts have people like Bryan Cranston, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, Louis CK, Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci – big, big, BIG stars.

Beats of No Nation is the rare film made for mostly anglo or western audiences that takes the point of view of a different kind of human experience. All the same, there were many who expressed disappointment that the movie seemed to paint “Africa” with such a broad brush, or for not being specific about which war the kid was fighting. In fact, the book and the movie are both about something specific – the abhorrent practice of ‘recruiting’ child soldiers. As we know, they are everywhere if you look for them. They are the paranoid gun rights advocates who arm their children young, teach them how to shoot, and hope that those kids never do anything with them that they shouldn’t. They are armed with explosives in fundamentalist groups in the middle east. They are taught to fight and hate at an early age because to many kids growing up, we’re all living in one long continual war. What Beasts of No Nation is about shouldn’t be specific to one country, or one skin color, or one war. It is about humanity – the one redeeming trait each of us is born with. It is about saving that, despite the kind of world we’ve made for ourselves. Beasts of No Nation is a plea to reclaim Agu as the boy he once was before he was forced to do the things he did.

Abraham Attah’s work in the film is astonishing. There can be no other word for it. It’s one of those things people will look back on and say – are you kidding me that this kid didn’t get an acting nomination for this? Well, he just did – a big one, with the Screen Actors Guild. Maybe it isn’t a specific nomination in lead, but it’s still a nomination that honors his work.

Many of us were complaining about the SAG nominations being so “out there.” In many ways they were. In good ways, in bad ways. Mostly, though, no one really stopped to think about what this Beasts of No Nation nomination really means for the future of the Oscar race, and the future of film. Where Beasts of No Nation goes from here is a different question. The Academy might nominate it if enough people put it down as one of their top five of the year – I can’t imagine anyone not doing that.