If you want to experience the chaos of urban warfare, you’ve come to the right place. The Battle of the Volcano relives the chaos of the Salvadorean Civil War through a mixture of live footage and re-enactments from the survivors. Parts of it are surreal and parts are shocking, as kids with guns take on the Capital City and the El Salvadorean government.
The opening of Apples looks bleak. There aren’t any vibrant colors and not much light (as you can see from the shot above). The main character starts out in a dark apartment bashing his head against the wall, and walks out into an overcast day with dark clothing. Even the narrow aspect ratio restricts an open view of the world he exists in. Apples has all the hallmarks of a depressing movie. But the bleakness is countered by a lot of deadpan comedy which ultimately provides a great commentary on modern day Instagram culture.
Not long after the main character walks out his apartment, he falls asleep on a bus and wakes up without his memory. What’s strange is that he doesn’t seem too startled or surprised that his memory is gone. It’s just another thing to happen to him that day. As a result it doesn’t feel like a big deal to us either. We also don’t know what he’s lost as his character hasn’t been established at this point. We don’t know how he feels, what he’s thinking, or if he has a family or job. We don’t even know his name.
The deadpan humor kicks off in the hospital ward. It’s where he discovers his love for apples, and where he’s put through multiple memory tests. One highlight was watching him take a music identification test. The ‘I’ve got this one in the bag’ certainty in his eyes as he pairs Jingle Bells to a completely unrelated flashcard image is hilarious. In the hospital he finds a lot of other people like him as the victims of the memory loss epidemic increases. For those who aren’t claimed by family members, the doctors offer a program to help them create a new life.
Each patient on the program is given a Polaroid camera and scrapbook (the film exists in a world without internet and mobile phones). They’re then given a bunch of tasks to do which they have to capture on camera as proof of completion. Most of the tasks are fairly ordinary life experiences like riding a bike, but they get more exceptional as the film progresses. Our protagonist goes about it fairly robotically – capturing everything he needs to without appearing to enjoy the journey. He’s left with a document which appears to show a much more interesting life than he actually leads and had led (before the amnesia). It’s a critique of the Instagram culture which superficially picks out the very best life pictures vs. the actual boring lives we live outside of the camera lens. As despite the great collection of photos our unnamed protagonist has put together, his character still doesn’t exist. He’s still nameless, characterless, and emotionless.
Head to our AFI Fest Hub for more reviews and short films from AFI Fest 2020.
A Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown after the death of his grandmother. Unlike the urban jungle of New York, his hometown in Michoacán is surrounded by the Monarch Butterflies he studies. His isolation abroad forces him to contemplate his new identity, displayed on screen in vivid magical scenes and memories.
Mendel is fated to test gene editing theories on Monarch butterflies. He’s both named after the father of modern genetics and hails from Angangueo, the main access point for the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. However, the coldness of his job, working in a laboratory in New York, doesn’t match the warmth of his memories growing up at home. The many shots of butterflies under the microscope being picked apart by Mendel’s scalpel removes the majesty of the butterflies and displaces Mendel from his past. At his work, the butterflies are just instruments to test the latest gene editing technology. Whereas, outside of work, they remind him of his home.
As the film progresses, Mendel seems conflicted with how he coldly pulls apart the Monarch butterflies at work. It’s implied that their beauty inspired him to become a scientist and they also appear in some of his happiest memories, as alluded to in the film’s flashbacks. Even in the narrative, he speaks of their majesty and mythology – that they are the souls of the dead returning home, and that they can even perceive mountains that have been hidden for millennia. From the way he dreams and speaks about them, he appears to revere them, instead of wanting to change them. The microscope shots of Mendel dissecting them runs against his thoughts and words.
A few times in the film, the director shoots Mendel in bed with a swarm of butterflies sitting on his body. The image emphasizes Mendel’s affinity for the Monarch butterfly. They like him, travel across imaginary borders to foreign lands before returning home. Their secrets are also hidden, just like Mendel’s buried trauma. These butterflies come to symbolize both his personal past (as the scene pops up when his traumatic nightmares surface) as well as his Mexican identity. Editing their genes perhaps symbolizes how he is also losing his own identity in New York. He’s lost touch with his family and the brother he looked up to and longs for reconnection when he returns home after his Grandmother’s death. At home, he spends his time reliving memories with his friends and family instead of speaking of his new life in New York. When the only colleague he identifies with leaves, he becomes even more lost abroad, which reflects in his attitude – ghosting his white girlfriend and showing no pride in his accomplishments. To regain his self, he has to embrace the butterfly and revere it. So he edits himself to pay respects to the animal that represents home.
Son of Monarchs is a brilliant character study of a Mexican scientist in a foreign land. Like other film’s that focus on the immigrant experience in New York – Lingua Franca, I’m No Longer Here – he doesn’t quite feel at home, and his thoughts are conveyed uniquely through his symbolic relationship with the butterfly. The only distractions are the side narratives whichfeel a bit empty due to the lack of exposition. These include name dropping the Trump presidency and immigrant crisis without development as well as leaving Mendel’s family relationships undercooked. The butterflies and Tenoch Huerta (who plays Mendel) are the crux of this film.
What to Watch Next
If you’re looking for more indie movies featuring the immigrant experience in New York, check out Lingua Franca and I Carry You With Me. The latter also features a lot of jumping back and forth into the memories of the main characters. There’s also I’m No Longer Here, which follows a similar Mexico-New York-Mexico arc with more of a character study like Son of Monarchs.
Or for more small town Mexico films, you could try Nudo Mixteco, an anthology film set during the Festival of San Mateo in Oaxaca, or Kings of Nowhere, a documentary that follows the last few residents of a flooded town in Northwestern Mexico.
Lastly if you want to watch more movies of protagonists identifying with animals – try Awakening of the Ants from Costa Rica or Aronofsky’sBlack Swan.
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