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Reviews
La historia oficial (1985)
History was written by the Assassins
Although it seems that the film "La Historia Oficial" was an attempt to mock the contemporary style of its cinematic American competition, I believe that stylistically the film is not American; however, its melodramatic content is purely American. I despise melodramas mainly for one reason: melodramatic films tend to "use" highly polemical historical, sociological, cultural or geographic issues as a mean to intensify their weak content. Thereafter, a sudden, supposedly intense, "problem" arises; such problem is usually a romantic microcosm of the main source (what I referred to as the polemical source), which it drains and diminishes. American examples of this travesty are: Casablanca, Titanic, and All that heaven allows.
Stylistically La Historia Oficial is a very Latin film: the lighting is very similar to that of "El callejón de los Milagros", while the cinematography is not as preoccupied with constant flamboyant takes, and the editing is not as conventionally "fluid" as that of American melodramas. The opening of the film is a metaphorical depiction of the entire story: A deceiving shot that simulates emptiness and isolation (the mental, spiritual and political state in which the Argentineans found themselves at that period of time). But as the film zooms out of focus we are surprised to see that below the camera focus, hundreds of students stand waiting to recite their National Anthem. The use of longs shots reminds me more of European than American films.
Thematically the film's focus is to represent the turmoil and corruption that Argentina suffered during the "Dirty War". The main family is used as the melodramatic microcosm to represent an entire culture
an entire Nation, but this trick worked subtler than it does in the majority of melodramas. For this reason I enjoyed the film: because the duality represented by the two social structures (those above and those below) was interestingly analogous to the dichotomy of female and male, wife and husband, good and evil. The anarchistic undertones of the film interested me: while Alicia represented the rigid, formal and intellectual part of society, her blindness to truth is almost unbelievable because of her faith in facts. Slowly she begins to reject the corrupted ideals she once saw as truth and realizes that there is another greater truth: the reality that occurs yet is ripped from the history book, for history is usually written by the Assassins. Her rejection of social institutions (education, religion, and family) convinced her that conventional society is a blind organism. On the other hand, her husband, Roberto was concerned with elevating in the social ladder regardless of consequences, which is a way of attempting to do "good" by disregarding evil. Because of Roberto's blind and cruel conviction, Alicia realized that all of history is fiction, and for once she understands and experiences the truth.
Although the representation of the greater truth through this family was well done, the ending was the most hindering point of the film because nothing was resolved. This sad reality of such interesting film contradicts Fernando Birri's idea of what Latin American Cinema should be: "
This is the revolutionary function of social documentary and realist, critical and popular cinema in Latin America. By testifying, critically, to this reality to this sub-reality, this misery cinema refuses it. It rejects it. It denounces, judges, criticizes and deconstructs it. Because it shows matters as they irrefutably are, and not as we would like them to be
". This sad terrible truth applies to Luis Peunzo's interpretation of that sub-reality and misery in which his country crumbled. Incredible flashes of an ultimate truth appeared in his cinematic vision
but the viewers were simply teased, like a young boy hypnotized by a glorious belly-dancer, who at the climactic moment decides to retreat from her art. "La Historia Oficial" depicts a great truth, yet it veils it in order to appeal to a greater audience. The film lies in order to win the warmth of acceptance and to receive trivial applauses. Even though it is clear that the Nation was left in chaotic turmoil and irreparable hopelessness, the "systematic and conventional" cinematic format the film had to apply to, forced the filmmaker to end in a happy/inscrutable manner
it is obvious that if the film ended in a tragic form its wouldn't have been accepted as well by the American audience, whom the film was targeting after all.
Hombre mirando al sudeste (1986)
The poetic convergence of madness and genius
"Man facing southeast" is a complex metaphysical film that defies the conventions of uninteresting simple-entertaining cinema. The very first thing that interested me about the film was the form in which the dialogue was delivered: the internal monologue of the doctor. The sweet combination of his voice and the words he utters is extremely poetic: imaginative, intellectual, painful and truthful.
A most memorable quote: "If I speak the truth outside, they'll bring me here". The truth is too sophisticated for the rational man. Rantes, the great master is, to me, a representation of holy martyrs. However, I think that his martyrdom was in fact his downfall: In my eyes he was a warrior, a revolutionary
and his death should have been much more poetic or tragic
instead his death was simple and pathetic. I once read a book called "El caballo de Troya" (The horse of Troy) and the author claims it is based on real events, some call it science fiction, others call it nonsense
In the book he speaks about Jesus being an extraterrestrial who was concerned with the state of the world. He speaks of angels as other extraterrestrials, and as the eclipse during the crucifixion as being a great spaceship revolving above the sacred cross of Jesus. Whether this film was influenced by this book or not it irrelevant; what is important is the fact that Rantes represents a holy figure. As already mentioned, his healing powers, his meek personality and his powers of telekinesis are parallels to the powers of Jesus. On the other hand, the fact that he has sacrificed everything that he had and was not concerned with the material world is very similar to the actions of the Buddha during his "great departure" from his kingdom. Lastly something that really interested me was the blue liquid that emanated from the woman's mouth: The doctor mentioned that she could have been an epileptic; however, it is known that in ancient tribal societies the western disease known as epilepsy is revered and considered a gift, which elevates the sufferer to the position of a Shaman. According to the Shamans, the thin layer they must cross to travel between the worlds is a blue-mirror substance. Thus, the film interested me very much because of the religious and mystical interpretations I drew from it.
Returning to the poetic magic of the film, it was extremely interesting to have found similarities in Eliseo Subiela's work and the work of the three greatest writers of Latin America: Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Octavio Paz. What is more interesting, however, is the fact that these three poetic visionaries are extremely different and that their interest and impact in film could be seen as a massive reason why Latin American films are either linear and dramatic, complex, poetic and surreal or a mixture of both. Octavio Paz is Mexico's finest surreal poet: he stands on the edge of liquid mental imagery, collectively or objectively impossible to understand
. An anthropologist of subjective power. On the other hand, Garcia Marquez is the master of magical realism: the charismatic genius of dramatic and romantic narrative stories; the other side of the spectrum. And in the middle sits the blind Argentinean Tiresias whose poetic prose is a labyrinth of surreal narrative. Also, while Paz and Marquez were very political writers, Borges stood outside the perimeter of Politics and concentrated more in his artistic and personal visions.
In the film Rantes attempts to teach the blind
he speaks a truth that is greater than the capability of comprehension of the others. Thus, it was, in a way, his fault that his truth was understood: Perhaps he needed to create an archive of his ideas
teaching, and having his students teach others. This idea takes me to a quote by Marquez: "Most important is the creation of a Latin American film archive. I coined the phrase, "we're working for oblivion": We're not achieving anything by teaching kids how to make films, if what they do doesn't last twenty years. What already exists is going to come to an end, nobody's going to remember what we did. The idea of the Foundation is to preserve this" (Page 2). It is therefore that I find this quote both paradoxical and important as a parallel to the film itself: Because the film is not that old, yet it is almost an impossibility to "find"
and because the attempt of Rantes to change the world was his very own destruction. The world will change if we plant seeds
Cinema will remain pure and exist as long as we understand its capability and realize that something beyond the boundaries of bullshit Hollywood exists, waiting, quivering
something explosive, powerful and poetic that needs to be discovered: True Cinema!.
María Candelaria (Xochimilco) (1944)
Melodrama is not always the lecherous whore of cinema.
Melodrama is not always the lecherous whore of cinema.
The face and beauty of Dolores del Rio did not, does not, and will not represent Mexico. But before attempting to explain this, I must ask a simple question: What does it mean to be a Mexican? or What is a Mexican? The self-image of the Mexican culture is an intertwined root of a shattered mirror, which stares at its very image, continuously, forever falling into a void of incompressibility, desperation, violence and a self-defying and self-destructive duality. The cultural collective unconsciousness of Mexico is a field of chaos, corruption, pain, and broken images that fail to recollect themselves because they belong to two histories: The ancient, mystical and long forgotten history of indigenous cultures who worshiped the Sun and the invisible forces of nature and, their clash and ultimate convergence with the European history and the Christian force of conquest. Quoting the opening line "Since 1516 minds attacked and overseen, now crawl amidst the ruins of this empty dream" from Rage Against the Machine's song People of the Sun, , I must say that for over five centuries the poor wretched and raped people of this so-called Mexico have struggled to see their original face before their conquest occurred.
The cultural duality of the Mexican mentality serves as the razor suicide malevolence that destroys and redefines its very own structure. Why was Dolores del Rio the face of Mexico then? Because she represented the powerful and conquering side of this mentality. Her European heritage and conventional beauty made her a Goddess of Mexican Cinema. However, I find quite interesting, in an ironic way, that in the film "Maria Candelaria" she represents the repressed, passive, and conquered spectrum of Mexico itself. However, this duality could be further understood, symbolically, if we separate the gorgeous piece of art that the film is: its cinematography, powerful directing, enigmatic and dialectically truthful language, and international recognition (Maria Candelaria is the only Mexican film to have ever won important prizes at the festival of Cannes); while on the other hand we see the brutal reality it depicts, and the confusion of social identity. As quoted by Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa: "An outdoor scene was carefully prepared with the snow-capped volcano Popocatepetl in the background, a cactus at the right-angle of the composition, circle of clouds crowning the peak and the open furrows of the valley in the foreground. Looking at the composition Buñuel said: "Fine, now let's turn the camera so that we can get those four goats and two crags on that barren hill". It necessary to create a balance between beauty and disgust, between the conventional and the radical, in order to balance the creation of an internationally acceptable film, while keeping the criticism or attacks of the filmmaker within the film.
Although the film is extremely melodramatic, I hold this film very dearly to my heart because of the childhood memories it evokes upon me every time I watch it and because of its representation of a class struggle that haunts Mexico even to this day. Indigenous groups constitute the lower class in Mexico, and their degradation, humiliation and exploitation constitute the stupidity and psychological angst of the Mexican people. In truth these small populations are the native, the original of the country. For this very reason, I enjoyed the film very much: Maria Candelaria represented the isolation of these indigenous lower classes, and their isolation was the reason for the destructive nature, for example, Maria Candelaria being unaccepted by her community and stoned to death at the conclusion of the film. The painful truth is that the morality of those who killed her is the mentality of their once enemy and oppressor: Christianity. On the other hand, Maria's introduction as a main character into the film was extremely odd and important because she is, at the opening point, set in a hierarchy of classicism: a Mexican man of strong European decent introduces her as a memory.
Although the film is a melodrama I like the film very much because it depicts a cruel reality, rather than using that cruel reality to simply emphasize the relationship of the two main characters: their love, their suffering, and their struggle constitute the melodramatic essence, but they are consequences of a greater cultural truth. Thus, the film is not only "entertaining" and conventional; it is also a critical social and cultural study of Mexico.
El lugar sin límites (1978)
Deconstruction of the Masculine asshole: an exorcism for Roberto Cobo
Arturo Ripstein's film "A place without limits" was extremely interesting and beautiful to see because its desperate symbolic and creative cry is extremely similar to that of Jorge Fons's "El callejon de los Milagros" and Ignacio Ortiz's "La horilla de la tierra". All three films are symbolic studies of an incredible Mexican mystical alienation, and the disturbing relationship of sexuality and violence. Although Ripstein's film is about twenty years older than the other two films, it is my belief that these obsessions of mysticism, sexuality violence, and identity have haunted the Mexican artistic mind ever since the demon/angel of modernism was released due to the fragmentation caused by WWI and the second modernist wave after WWII. In Europe Surrealism, Dadaism, Cubism, Futurism, and Vorticism had an extreme impact upon social and cultural behavior due to the amount of individuals involved within these groups. Mexico, however, did not see these impacts as profoundly, until some of these European rebels, anarchists, and artists sought Mexico as an escape from Europe: People like Andre Breton, Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel, etc. Three very important figures in Mexican modernism, however, are Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Octavio Paz. Of the three, Octavio Paz is, at least to me, the most important artist to have ever come out of Mexico: A Nobel laureate surrealist master whose work represents the Mexican spirit better than any other voice. And it is Paz's voice I hear, and his poetic angst echoing in "A place without limits". Just like Paz's poetry depicts an ancient Mexico that can only be dreamed of and witnessed through poetic visions, Ripstein brings his viewers to a rural and long forgotten small town in Mexico where violence and sexuality blindfold the population's unconsciousness like a soft and sensual fog. Something I disliked about the film was the acting, which seemed extremely theatrical: although the language used in the film is very quotidian the delivery by the subjects seemed false. On the other hand, the editing and cinematography were extremely raw. The cuts are not very fluid, and the camera movements are not conventional: when we want to see more, Ripstein shows us less, and when we want to see less he shows us more. This has a powerful effect on the audience due to the graphic and taboo content of the film. I found it extremely interesting that Roberto Cobo took on the role of Manuela, but at the same time, I saw it as both an artistic and spiritual necessity: about twenty years before this film he played Jaibo in Buñuel's Los Olvidados. According to Julio Cortazar: "Everything is fine in the outskirts of the city
poverty and promiscuity do not alter the established order, the blind can sing and beg in squares, while the young boys play at bull-fighting on dry waste-ground
then Jaibo enters". If one pays attention at the description, it could apply to both Los Olvidados and to A place without Limits; however, in Los Olvidados Roberto Cobo plays the Alpha Male, the destroyer of balance and peace, while he plays the peaceful and abused victim in A place without Limits. To me this is not only brave, but beautiful and magical: if he had played the role of Pancho in this film (which he could of), he would have become a clown
a routine, an actor that fulfills the same character over and over again
but he took on the role of Manuela, which is the complete opposite of what Jaibo was. By taking this chance he experienced ambivalence and exorcised himself (as originally a non-actor) of the image the character of Jaibo created for him. Becoming Manuela was not only powerful, but also glorious for Roberto Cobo's image in Mexican Cinema. Returning to the earlier comparison between Ripstein and Paz, I must admit that "A place without limits" is a pure Mexican film: the beautiful imagery and presentation are "Mexican", the places, the images, the words: they belong there
sociologically, culturally and collectively the film is a Mexican mesh. The film is an obsessive study of a dreamer's imagination, attempting to collect the pieces that make the whole of his culture: and by creating a very simplistic form of film-making, with no bull, and no unimportant and unnecessary complex flamboyant embellishments, Ripstein saturates his mise en scène with colors, shapes and objects that cannot be found anywhere else. Similarly, Octavio Paz's glorious surrealist imagination saturates the white pages of his work with images, sounds, tastes, places and occurrences that cannot be experienced anywhere else. Their incomprehensible connection of sexuality and violence are also part of the Mexican Mythological archetypes of contemporary existence: Don Aleju represents the Old-Rich man who moans and bitches at everyone
the stereotypical man who "asks" for the respect he believes he deserves, and lives behind a well-mannered mask for personal interest. Pancho is the stereotypical alpha-male, a macho feared by all, and Manuela represents the free spirit of change, originality, freedom, and carelessness, which is a force that is feared by those who fear their very own self. Pancho's obvious, yet unconscious homosexual tendencies are his self-purification: a counterattack on his macho fixation
. While Don Aleju's attempt at ultimate control and ownership only take him further away from himself and from others, yet one can see (in the party scene where Manuela dances) that he indeed needs of others and that unconsciously he desires to be liked and accepted rather than feared and revered. A place without limits is a fierce, magical and hypnotizing film. What else could Ripstein have done to achieve perfection? Have Manuela dance more than two times.