If you love great film or want to be guided around 1970s Mexico City, you’ve come to the right place. Roma is one of the best films you’ll see this century. It’s stream of consciousness narrative feels like life and memory, and the acting and cinematography is a visual treat. Open you’re mind and immerse yourself in Roma.
It’s obvious Silent Light is going to be a beautifully shot film once you take in the 10 minute opening. It’s one of the most stunning openings you could see – best saved for the big screen. Whilst the images are stunning, they never feel forced, just like the script, a simple story of a family man having an affair with another woman. It’s depth lies in it’s patience and transparency of the characters who hide nothing from their friends and family, or from us, the audience.
In Towards the Battle, Louis, a French photographer, gets lost in French occupied Mexico in the 1860’s. He wants to photograph the French-Mexican War, but gets lost in the Mexican wilderness trying to find it. However, his encounter with Pinto, a Mexican peasant, gives him the companion and support he needs to carry out his quest.
Louis is in Mexico as commissioned by the French army. He holds a permission slip from the French general which acts as his pass to freely travel the region without reprimand from the roaming French army. It’s the only thing that separates Louis from the rabble of the French army. If he loses it, he’d be conscripted into the army, or, if he’s lucky, sent back to France.
Whilst he can escape from the marauding French army, he can’t escape from the Mexican wilderness. As the scenery changes from mountainous scrub-land to deep rain-forest, Louis is (literally) one step away from a premature death. It’s obvious he can’t survive by himself with two horses carrying his huge amount of photography gear. Luckily for him, a Mexican peasant named Pinto finds him when he’s starving and gives him the food he needs to survive.
From that moment on, they become Don Quixote and Sancho Panza-esque partners. Louis is Don Quixote: a leader of a well off background that loses himself in the quest of one of his hobbies. Instead of chivalry, Louis drags a mountain of photographic equipment across the Mexican wilderness in search of a war that doesn’t appear to exist. When Pinto finds him, he’s already gone a bit mad in his quest to capture a photo of the elusive war. Pinto is Louis’ Sancho Panza: a Mexican peasant that knows Louis is mad, and doesn’t understand him (he doesn’t speak French), but happily goes along with Louis’ delusional quest because he’s got nothing better to do. Along the way, he saves Louis a couple of times, and subordinates himself to him to allow Louis to live out his fantasy. The Don Quixote allegory gives Towards the Battle a timeless feel, and gives an extra layer to Louis’ madness and his slow progression to his own awareness which he reaches in the final scenes.
From the scenery to the setting to the characters, Towards the Battle was one of the films that flew under the SBIFF radar. It’s a well made update of Cervantes’ Don Quixote applied to the French occupation of Mexico. It’s used to show the madness of the French in Mexico and the absurdity of the French occupation of Mexico. The French (Louis) and Don Quixote both live a world away from the reality.
In Black Mexicans, a fisherman splits his time between two women: his wife, Juana, and his lover Magdalena.
Neri, the fisherman, is an old Don Juan. He’s known in the community for his promiscuity, which doesn’t end with Juana and Magdalena. However, the film focuses on his two lovers and their two daughters of a similar age. Whilst Nero’s two families share similarities, they have different problems. Juana has Neri, but she’s dying from a terminal illness, whilst Magdalena lives waiting on Neri and the relationship with his wife to end. Magdalena isn’t hoping for Juana to die – she regularly donates blood and even offers her donating her liver to help her – but she does want clarity from her relationship with Neri so she can move on with her life.
The other difference between the two families is their wealth. Whilst neither family is wealthy, Magdalena at least has her health to continue earning money through her restaurant. She’s able to buy a new fridge, and isn’t too worried about Neri not being able to catch any fish. Her ability to earn money, also gives her daughter the freedom to do what she wants as she doesn’t have to help support the family. In contrast, Juana is too poorly to earn, and Neri can’t support them, so her daughter has to find work to keep them afloat. Juana’s daughter therefore doesn’t have the same freedoms as her step sister and resents her absent father more for it.
Black Mexicans is set along the picturesque Oaxaca coast within the Afro-Mexican community in Costa Chica. The remote and empty setting reflects the Afro-Mexican experience in Mexico. Just like Afro-Mexicans in Mexico, the setting is hidden away from the rest of Mexico. No one makes the effort to take the boat trip there, except for the rare pair of backpackers. There’s also no sign of any non-black Mexicans here, just as the Afro-Mexicans here are hidden away from the rest of Mexico. The empty beach chairs and beach restaurants show that people just don’t care about the Afro-Mexican community. It’s isolated enough to pretend it doesn’t exist and empty enough that it doesn’t attract any attention.
It’s no surprise then that the Juana’s daughters efforts to make a life for herself appear hopeless. Her father will always be promiscuous and forget about her, her mother is terminally ill, she’s in inescapable debt, and there’s no support from the government (as indicated when a highway policeman says she’s not Mexican on a rare trip outside the community). Without her mother she’s alone. Her hopelessness is expressed through her stoic expressions. She never smiles or frowns, and never appears disappointed or angry. She’s aware of the hopelessness of her situation and her inevitable prostitution to pay off her debts.
Black Mexicans is the first feature film that tries to depict the Afro-Mexican experience with an all Afro-Mexican cast. It does have its problems: some Afro-Mexicans have called out the stereotypical depictions and the ignorantly prejudiced comments of the director. However, separating the director from the film, Black Mexicans deserves credit for depicting a community invisible to the rest of Mexico. Well constructed images and storyline might remind you of Costa Rica’s Land of Ashes or Eve’s Bayou. It’s use of setting and the stoic character of Juana’s daughter highlight the lack of opportunity and support for the black community in Mexico and their exclusion from their Mexican identity.
If you love controversy with plenty of drama, check out The Crime of Father Amaro. It’s a full frontal attack on the Catholic Church in Mexico which many tried to ban. Whilst it’s not as damaging as Spotlight, it will remind you that all of us are human no matter what position we’re in.
Here’s a dramatic trailer for a dramatic film.
Why Watch Crime of Father Amaro?
It’s controversial – religious groups lobbied to ban it in Mexico but their attempts backfired as the publicity rocketed this film to success at the box office
To see Gabriel Garcia Bernal (famous for Y Tu Mama Tambien, No, Motorcycle Diaries and many more)
If you love a bit of melodrama
It was Oscar nominated for best foreign language picture
The Breakdown
The opening of the film deliberately leads us to sympathize with the young Father Amaro (Garcia Bernal). Firstly, he’s charitable. When the elderly man he sits next to on the bus is robbed, he reimburses him with his own money. Secondly, he appears friendly. The local kids run around him after he playfully grabs their football and he chills with the fellow pastors to watch football on TV. He has all the makings of a great guy. However, the melodrama slowly kicks to life as he begins to take advantage of one of the parish girls who is clearly infatuated with him.
There are plenty of omens that something is going to go wrong. Firstly, you’ll notice that wherever Father Amaro is, the statues of the Saints and Jesus are always watching him. There’s a statue of Jesus that watches over him at home, from his bedside table. Furthermore, the director makes sure you notice each of the saints looking down at him whenever he is in the church by cutting to static shots of each one as he walks down the aisle. Nothing he does escapes from their view.
Secondly, the saints have a helper in a crazy old woman aptly named Dionisia after the Greek God Dionysus, the God of Wine, as well as ritual madness and religious ecstasy. It’s clear that Dionisia is both mad and madly religious. In addition, she also comparable to the witches from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. She predicts the love affair between Father Amaro and Amelia.
The two omens (the Saints and Dionisia) are both critiques of Catholicism. Firstly, of all the sins that are committed in plain sight of the saints and then confessed the next day. And secondly, of how it is interpreted by the population (Dionisia has malformed dolls posing as Saints, and tries to exorcise her disabled neighbor).
Conclusion
The Crime of Father Amaro is another great controversial melodrama from Mexico. It attacks the Catholic Church it’s hypocrisies, so it’s not surprising that Catholic groups tried to ban it. Unfortunately for them, the controversy propelled it to become the biggest film in Mexico.
If you want even more religious controversy, check out Oscar winner Spotlight. However, if you want blatant provocation, check out the Mexican film Battle in Heaven. If you want to see some more great Mexican film, check out our Top Ten Mexican Films here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.