Water for Elephants

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb Listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1067583/
CNS/USCCB Review - http://www.usccb.org/movies/w/waterforelephants2011.shtml
Roger Ebert's Review - http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110421/REVIEWS/110429994

Water for Elephants (directed by Francis Lawrence, screenplay by Richard LaGravenese based on the book by Sara Gruen) is a thoughtful and provocative melodrama set during the Great Depression. Jacob (played by Robert Pattinson of the Twilight series fame), about to get his degree in veterinary science at Cornell University has his world turned upside down when he is pulled out of his final exam to the news that his Polish immigrant parents (who had just reminded him that morning of how proud they were of him) were killed in a car accident. As he seeks then to their accounts in order, he finds out that the bank was going to take their farm. Why? His father had mortgaged the farm to pay for Jacob's tuition payments. After getting a lecture from the banker "don’t make the same mistakes that your father did," Jacob packs a suitcase (the farm is going to go anyway) and starts heading "to the city" (Albany) in hopes of finding a job. It’s 1931. The freight train that he seeks to jump onto to hitch a ride turns out to be circus train, and thus begins the adventure of his life.

The circus is owned by August (played by Christoph Waltz of Inglorious Basterds fame). He is nuts, running his circus like a pirate ship. When employees cause him trouble or he can’t afford to keep everyone, he literally has the "troublemakers" or "expendables" thrown off the train.

Why would anyone work under such conditions? And perhaps why would someone like August, who has his charming qualities as well, become such a monster? Jacob, who until recently had not felt poverty/desperation, asked such questions both of himself and of August’s lovely but (psychically) scarred wife Marlena (played by Reese Witherspoon) who was actually of Jacob's age rather than that of August who seemed almost a generation older than both of them.

In good part, the reason why people put up with such conditions was because it was the Depression. People were desperate. Circuses were also the "end of the line" for many particularly vulnerable people. So if one already had a predisposition for sadism or megalomania, leading such an operation was a perfect fit. Thus August became the "king" of something of a traveling infirmery/madhouse in a world (Depression Era rural New York) that seemed at the time to have met its Apocalypse. (It would not be entirely a stretch to compare the rural New York of Water for Elephants to the post-apocalyptic worlds of the Mad Max movies or more recently the Book of Eli. Those other movies were, of course, far more starkly drawn, but when people get thrown off the train in the dead of night because the Boss doesn’t have money to feed them, one’s talking about very dark times).

Jacob proves useful to August because he is vet. Well, he wasn't really a vet because he never actually got his degree (because of the tragic deaths of his parents).  But he was "almost a vet" and to a "pirate circus" running on a shoe string, that was good enough.

When the circus’ star horse, which Marlena was riding in the show, dies (Actually it’s put-down between shows by Jacob despite August’s objections, who’d have the horse just be run into the ground) August bets the whole circus on the acquisition of a show elephant named Rosie from another circus that had met its end. Nobody really had a clue about how to manage an elephant but August nominally puts Jacob in charge of making the elephant into an act. And when Jacob doesn’t immediately know what to do, August offers his own approach. Fortunately, Jacob discovers something remarkable about Rosie (which folks who know something about animal training would appreciate) and this at least temporarily saves the day.

The rest of the movie is quite predictable and tragic, kinda like watching the "proverbial train wreck," even though (1) that isn’t exactly what happens and (2) anyone likes these kinds of movies will certainly get one’s money’s worth – there are plenty of places where this movie will make one cry.

I wouldn’t recommend the movie for small children because of some of the treatment of the animals (as well as of people) which is quite traumatic.  But also thematically I can’t imagine that an "8 year old" would enjoy watching a 2 hour movie about desperately poor people seeking to find a way to survive.

For adults, however, the movie certainly has something to say about "old-time patriarchy" (represented by August) where the man, however insane, was "the Boss," and the contrast between that approach and the more gentle one (represented by Jacob) that most of us are now more familiar with where everyone is made to feel that "yes, times are tough but we’re in this together."

In our current tough economic times, a movie set during the last Great Depression with this conflict playing out "on the train" offers one much to think about indeed.

Finally, the United States is a nation of immigrants, something that often gets highlighted in the movies.  Those of Polish descent may appreciate this movie in a special way for its positive portrayal of Polish-Americans as honest, hardworking, family-oriented folk with their heads-screwed-on right and their values in order throughout the film.  There have been many movies made over the years about Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Hispanic Americans, etc.  This is the first movie that I can think of where old -time Polish Americans are presented in such a nice, prominent and positive way.  And there is a nice surprise / plot twist in the movie that further highlights the Polishness of this story as well.


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Scream 4

MPAA (R) CNS/USCCB (0) Roger Ebert (2 stars) Fr Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1262416/
CNS/USCCB review -
http://www.usccb.org/movies/s/scream42011.shtml
Roger Ebert’s review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110414/REVIEWS/110419991

Scream 4 is the latest in the Scream franchise (all written by Kevin Williamson and directed by horror legend Wes Craven) of slasher horror flicks and all starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and David Arquette. The gimmick in the Scream series is that the characters these movies have all seen other slasher horror films and so try to avoid mistakes made by characters in the previous films even as they walk into "new" mistakes or end up making other "old" mistakes.

Hence there’s there’s a scene midway through the movie, after the slasher "ghostface" (who wears a black hooded cape and a stupid drugstore quality Halloween ghost mask) has racked up a half a dozen new high school/teenage victims, when two young cops (one white, one African American) are sitting in their squad car protecting the home of Sidney Prescott (played by Neve Campbell) the series’ perpetual but always surviving victim. And the two cops realize, "Hey wait a minute, it’s not good to be rookie in these stories." Then one looks at his watch and says, "Well I guess it’s time to take a look around again." The other, stepping out of the car says, "Sure, I’ll be right back. Oh shoot, that’s a terrible line to say in these kind of movies!" He’s right, but it doesn’t matter. They both soon die... ;-)

I put a smiley at the that episode, because the movie, as blood-soaked as it is, is actually very funny. Now how could that be? Well here is where Wes Craven has been a genius when it comes to these kind of films and certainly Kevin Williamson has learned a lot from this master over the years. It seems to me that a commercially successful horror film has to both spook the audience and yet spook not it too much. That is, the audience has to always remember that it’s "just watching a movie." So how’s that signaled? It’s best signaled by sticking to stock, more or less predictable characters and formulas, or tweaking the characters/formulas but only "just so much" as nothing completely falls off the audience’s comfort zone. Yes, one _could_ certainly create a truly blood-curdling, Hell-like, utterly terrifying/incomprehensible movie, but very few people would see it, much less go to a sequel.

So if a film-maker is smart (and Craven/Williamson are certainly that, arguably geniuses, in this regard) the film-maker would make a "horror" movie that (1) scares, (2) may even address an aspect of contemporary/pop culture – Scream 4 is certainly about the i-phone/app, Facebook, webcam "all is online" teen/young adult mentality of today – but (3) not scare too much, because one wants one’s customers to come back. So one seeks then to make _really good_ "two hour Disneyland rides."

Now there could be a lot of fun doing this, and the horror movie genre is one which lends itself to "dialoging" between movies and/on building upon previous ones. As I wrote in my review of The Roommate, a generation ago, the heroine of these movies was generally the easily identifiable "good girl." Back when I was a teenager, we used to almost immediately identify her as "the Virgin." (which becomes a _very interesting_ label theologically speaking, see below). In recent years, there seems to be "dialog" going-on in the horror genre in regards to the question "What if the ‘good girl’ isn’t particularly good anymore?" The recent movies Drag Me to Hell, The Roommate and this one, Scream 4, all deal with new ‘good girls’ who aren’t all that ‘good.’ And each of these movies takes the new scenario with the "not altogether good girl" and plays with it.

Now many critics generally hold their noses when reviewing these kinds of movies, noting the bloodbath and mayhem that’s often present, but (1) as I explained above, the bloodbath/mayhem can’t be too excessive or else one will lose patrons, and (2) Wes Craven was an English major and hence certainly knew his Shakespeare. Shakespearean tragedies were _always_ bloodbaths, where all "the guilty" and a even few of the innocent died and only a very few (and often _not even_ the tragic heroes of the story) were left standing at the end.

The contemporary mad slasher flick is actually quite similar. The guilty (usually of some form of arrogance) _all_ meet bad ends (often in particularly gruesome ways), some innocent bystanders (like the cops above) often die (hey, even in the original Star Trek series, the poor schmucks wearing the red uniforms at the beginning of each episode were almost always dead by the second or third scene) and only a very few are left standing at the end of the film, _usually_ one of them being the ‘good girl,’ who usually fended off the monster (in a story line as old as the Bible, Gen 3:15, Rev 12).  Note, I even wrote an article about this matter, as it was presented in the movie The Terminator a few years after finishing the seminary.

Scream 4 tweaks and plays with the formula but ends basically with the same result. And part of the enjoyment for the audience watching is trying to figure out who’s going make it and who’s going to die. And I submit, that the experience is really not that much different from reading Hamlet for the first time, though often enough, funnier.

Note to parents, the movie's R rating is appropriate due to the violence and greater than PG-level gore. So it certainly would not be appropriate for little kids. But it is standard fodder for the high school and college aged (and perhaps for those of us who remember these movies from our younger years as well).


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The Conspirator

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

IMDb Listing -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0968264/
CNS/USCCB Review -
Roger Ebert’s Review -
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110414/REVIEWS/110419988

The Conspirator (directed by Robert Redford, screenplay by James Solomon, story by James Solomon and Gregory Bernstein) is about the trial of Mary Surratt for her connection in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865. Mary Surratt (played in the movie by Robin Wright) had operated a Washington D.C. boarding house frequented by a number of the conspirators in the months prior to the assassination.

The case is of relevance today because it was conducted under the auspices of a military tribunal rather than civilian court in a charged atmosphere where the public was truly shocked by the horror of the crime. The crime involved not merely the assassination of President Lincoln but a conspiracy to also assassinate then Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. That is, it was an attempt by a band of Confederate sympathizers, led by Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, to effectively decapitate the U.S. government just 5 days after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia signaling the final defeat of the South in the American Civil War after the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond Virginia on April 1. As such, there was also a perceived need on the part of the U.S. government to demonstrate to any would-be Confederate sympathizers that the war was truly coming to an end and _any_ further resistance even in the form of sabotage or in today’s language, terrorism, was futile.

Yet, to make the point, Mary Surratt, arguably innocent, was put to death after a questionable trial by a military tribunal and a last minute serving of a writ of habeas corpus to force her retrial in a civil court was cancelled by President Andrew Johnson by the authority that had been granted the President during the Lincoln Presidency by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863.

The movie is well written, well directed, staged and acted and is generally faithful to the historical record.
Initially, Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson) was retained for Mary Surratt's defense.  However due to various political machinations, he ended up having to recuse himself from the case and instead asked a younger lawyer and Union combat veteran Fredrick Aiken (played by James McAvoy) to take her case. Their primary opponent was U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (played by Kevin Kline) who most fervently argued that those arrested and held for the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted assassinations of Johnson and Seward be dealt with quickly and decisively "for the sake of the nation" and "the cause of [future] peace."

Many of the same issues and concerns are, of course, being raised today, with regards to the many Moslem extremists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (and at "undisclosed locations" elsewhere throughout the world) in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attack and other possible/probable conspiracies.

Added to the mix of issues in the movie was Mary Sarrott’s Catholicism (an unpopular and mistrusted religion in the United States at the time) as well as strong suggestion that several Catholic priests were successfully hiding the whereabouts of Mary Sarrott’s son John Sarrott, Jr, who was arguably far more involved in the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln and the others than his mother was. Asked in the movie by Aiken why the priests would be protecting Mary Sarrott’s son, Mary’s Confessor replied "and expose him to this [farce of a proceeding] as well?"

Movies like this stand or fall on basis of their faithfulness to the historical record of the Mary Surratt case. As noted above, it seems to me that in this regard, Redford’s movie does very well, and leaves viewers with much to think about.


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Miral

MPAA (R) Michael Phillips (2 Stars) Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
Michael Phillips review

I did not expect to like Miral (directed by Julian Schnabel, novel and scenario by Rula Jebreal) as much as I did. However,did I ever _come to love_ this movie and for a whole host of reasons. So let me list them now:

First, one lesson that I’ve learned in my life has been that one of the greatest tragedies of the "great historical dramas" that play out around us is that they simply impose another layer of awfulness over the smaller/more intimate tragedies in life. I wrote about this as well in my review of the Spanish movie Biutiful (about a couple of second generation descendants of Moroccan immigrants trying to make out an existence in Barcelona of today). The movie Miral, however, takes this point and presents it in spades.

For while "the grand drama" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays-out, the characters in Miral, continue to suffer their multitude of such smaller/more intimate tragedies. The main character Miral’s mother, Nadia (played by Yasmine Al Massri), was sexually abused as a teenager. Miral’s saintly father, Jamal (played by Alexander Siddig) an imam at the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, who fell in love and married Miral’s mother _precisely_ because she was such a mess, eventually comes down with cancer. Hind Hussaini (played by Haim Abbass), the directress of the boarding school to which Miral is assigned after Miral’s troubled mother commits suicide, eventually succumbs to old age. Miral (played by Frieda Pinto) herself grows up something of an orphan, though she goes home to be with her father every weekend. Everyone of these stories could have made for a movie in itself.

And yes, I have the order of the story "right." As Miral herself begins to narrate her story, she begins by saying "I was born in 1973 but my story really began in 1947 (with the partition plan to divide Palestine between Israel and the Palestinians)." As one who also could not explain easily why I was born in the United States without explaining how my parents got here (my parents were Czech immigrants who came to the United States by means two sets of terrible stories), I understood _completely_ why "Miral’s story" began 27 years before she was born – Both Hitler and Stalin were unwanted but ever present "guests" at my home at every family gathering that I remember growing-up. And plenty of Jewish Americans and Israelis growing up with stories of their parents and grandparents living during the Holocaust could certainly appreciate the back-dated beginnings of their stories as well.

So hanging over the "more normal"/ "little" tragedies that still afflict most of us in one way or another, in the story of Miral was _added_ the _awful pall_ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in a perpetual state of anxiety on the part of Israelis and in a seemingly unending torrent of tragedies on the part of the Palestinians, bringing _no one peace_. Israelis can’t even enter a bus or a movie theater without feeling anxious about exposing themselves to possible terrorist attack, Palestinians have their homes torn down by Israeli battering rams and earth movers in retribution for crimes that a relative may (or may not) have been involved in; close friends get killed by stray Israeli bullets dispersing rioters/demonstrators (whether they were involved or not); and they are beaten / tortured when they get picked-up by Israeli authorities on suspicion of being involved in _possible_ terrorist/subversive activity. How unbelievably awful.

Second, I liked this movie because it was presented largely from _the perspective of the young_. I am convinced that by the time one is in one’s 40s, one’s large life decisions have been played out. Hence the imams, the school directors, yes, the Israeli military officers or the PLO officials operating (then) out of Tunisia have largely played out their hands (as best as they could), but I do believe that it is the young, those in their late teens through their twenties, who have a chance to make something better. And to its credit, the movie shows THAT THERE IS HOPE. And I myself can testify to that hope.  When _I_ was in grad school, still studying engineering back then before changing directions and becoming a priest, I knew a good number of Arab students in my department and it struck me that _always_ among the most moderate were the Palestinians. One of them put it very, very well to me one time: "We have to find a way to life in peace. We simply have to. To others (and other Arabs) this is a theoretical conflict. To us, we see it day to day. The land is too small, we live too close together, we have to find a way to live in peace."

And _this sentiment_ that I heard 20 years ago, plays out in this movie. Miral, a young woman in her late teens falls in love with a Palestinian fighter, Hani (played by Omar Metwally)  He is a determined patriot but _not_ a crazed fanatic. In fact, he ends up being killed by more radical Palestinian fighters because _he_ was willing to go along with Arafat's PLO and accept 22% of Palestine for a Palestinian state in return for peace.

Then when Jerusalem proves too hot for Miral’s safety, her saintly imam father sends her to her aunt living in Haifa. There Miral finds that her cousin has fallen in love with an Israeli girl named Lisa (played by Stella Schnabel). Initially, she disapproves, but Lisa proves to be nice (even though Lisa’s father is an Israeli military officer and disapproves with her having Palestinian friends).

In the Bible, it took a generation of wandering out in the Desert before the Israelites made it to the Promised Land (and I know that we can choose to take this image _literally_ or perhaps today, more appropriately _symbolically_). Perhaps it will take _several generations_ before peace is finally achieved between the Israelis and Palestinians, BUT I AM POSITIVE THAT IT WILL COME AS A RESULT OF THE CONTACTS AND THE _INNOCENCE_ / _CLEAN SLATE_ OF THE YOUNG. With each generation there is new hope.

AND THIS HOPE EXTENDS BEYOND THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT. I currently live and work in a part of Chicago where for at least 2-3 generations a collection of Slavs, Irish and Italians (calling themselves "Anglos" but have as much in common with "the English" as Cortes ever did) have looked down on Hispanics (mostly Mexicans with a few Puerto Ricans) living in the same neighborhoods, with the Hispanics resenting them for their arrogance. How long can this go on? The hope is that with every generation, it does get better, and I do believe that it does. The former Pope John Paul II, who’s being beatified on May 1^st, must be rolling in his grave, knowing that Poles and Mexicans (whom he _loved_ and  there is AN ENORMOUS STATUE OF JOHN PAUL II by the side of the BASILICA OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE IN MEXICO CITY) don’t get along in places like Chicago. How is it possible when BOTH peoples suffered so much and BOTH peoples _love_ the Blessed Mother so much? And yet we look for reasons to dislike/hate each other. Yet with EACH GENERATION springs NEW HOPE and with each generation it _does_ get better.

Finally, I liked this movie because it is filled with great role models on all sides. There’s the Directress of the School, Miral’s imam father, Lisa the Israeli girlfriend of Miral’s cousin. There’s even the convicted Palestinian terrorist (a former nurse) who helps Miral’s mother when Miral’s mother finds herself in jail after causing a simple commotion on a bus ("get away from me, you creep," remember that she had been sexually abused...) rather than being in the process blowing up the bus as the other (Israeli) passengers feared. Almost no one is completely evil, and many, many people, if at times weak, are basically good.

So what a great and brave film! As the movie notes at the end, it is "dedicated to those who believe that peace is possible." So ... Shalom / Salaam / Paz / Pokój z wámi.  And may we one day have Peace.


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Rio [2011]

MPAA (G) CNS/USCCB (A-I) Mike Phillips (2 stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB review
Michael Phillips review

Rio (story and directed by Brazilian-born Carlos Saldanha screenplay by Don Rhymer) is fun animated movie giving "birds eye" view of Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval time.  With Brazil becoming increastingly important on the world stage (along with India and China) it probably makes sense for Hollywood to start making more Brazil friendly/Brazil themed movies such as this.  (Indeed, Rio apparently was released in Latin America several weeks before its release in the United States on April 15th).  And the bird metaphor actually worked very, very well in presenting the color and craziness of carneval time in Rio. 

Okay, so what is the story?  Baby Blue Macaw later named Blu (voice by Jesse Eisenberg) wakes up one morning in a tropical forest outside of Rio and falls out of his nest only to be captured by bird smugglers who eventually send him to the United States.  Sometime later, he finds himself falling out of a crate in a place decidely "Not Rio" (as the movie notes) -- Moosehead, Minnesota in the winter, where a girl named Linda finds him and raises him).  And Blu is as happy as can be as Linda's companion, who even names the eventual book store that she opens after him.

Their tranquility is broken however when Tulio, an ornitologist from Brazil arrives and tells Linda that Blu is the only known male left of his entire species and that Linda must let him mate with Jewel (voice by Anne Hathaway) the only known female of Blu's species who he now has at his laboratory in Rio de Janeiro.  After initial resistance by both Linda and Blu, they decide to travel with Tulio to see if Blu and Jewel could mate.

Initially Jewel is not impressed with the nerdy Blu because he can't even fly.  However, when the two care captured once more by a small gang of bird smugglers Marcel, Tipa and Armando (voiced by Carlos Ponce, Jeffrey Garcia, Davi Vieira) and taken to their hide-out in a favela in the hills of Rio de Janeiro for sale and transport once again out of the country, they realize that they have to work together.  Their attempts at escape are aided by a family man Tucan named Rafael (voice by George Lopez) as well as two other birds Nico and Pedro (voices by Jamie Foxx and Will i Am) who try to help Blu better impress Jewel in matters of love.

The smugglers are aided by a british sounding Cockletoo named Nigel (voice by Jemaine Clement) who also recruits the city's monkeys to recapture the two Blue Macaws when they do break free.

Much happens, and a climactic part of it happens during Rio's Carneval Parade.  In the midst of their adventures Linda, who's never been outside of Minnesota (in good part, ironically, in order to take care of her bird Blu), finds that she _likes_ Rio, driving a motorbike down the windy streets of a favela "just like a snowmobile."  And "all ends well" with both sets of "love birds," avian (Blu and Jewel) and human (Linda and Tulio) living happily ever after. 

Now that is the story, yet as often is the case, there's more to Rio than simply a cute animated story about tropical birds.

First, there were several homages to recent Brazilian films that enjoyed international and critical success.  For instance, when Blu and Jewel first escape their bird smuggling captors, the scene that follows appeared to be an animated send-up to the "flight of the chicken" scene at the beginning of Cidade de Deus (City of God).  Then, more poignantly, Linda and Tulio adopt street kid Fernando, who helped them find Blu and Jewel, reminding one of the beautiful Brazilian movie (and a real tear-jerker) Central do Brazil (Central Station) about a street kid whose mom got hit by a bus in front of the central train station in Rio de Janeiro and he had absolutely no one to turn to except for a middle-aged woman who arguably had ripped him and his mother off less than 10 mintues before. 

Then Linda opens a new bookstore in Rio named "Livreria Blu" still with a picture with her beloved Blu on the storefront window but _pointedly_ (and I've known a few Brazilians who've made the point) now takes care of Fernando (a kid in need) rather than Blu (a pet), letting Blu and Jewel "live happily ever after" on their own.  Brazilians that I've known over the years have often made the point that Americans seem more concerned about animals and trees than (poor) people in need.  So, point taken and _understood_.

Finally, after several disappointing recent animated and kid oriented pictures, this is one that I've really enjoyed.  And I liked it precisely because it seemed to include everybody.  The cast was huge and diverse.  Contrast that with the recent almost bleached white Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick's Rules or Hop where British sounding Easter bunnies ruled over Hispanic sounding Easter chicks and the chief and _only_ villain was "Carlos" the foreman chick who wished to overthrow the bunnies.  What kind of a message is that to _both_ white and hispanic children? 

In this regard, it needs to be noted (and again, my only criticism of this movie would be) that there was a needlessly British sounding "villain bird" in Rio.  However, Rio did have human villains who were Brazilian (and Brazilians like Tulio and Fernando who were heroes as well).  And Brazilians that I've known have often liked to remind me that Brazil's problems are often not of its own doing but imposed from outside -- often from Britain and the U.S.A.  So in "bird brained" Nigel, there could have been a jab against Britain and the U.S.A. in this movie as well.

Still, both the casting and the plot of the story was one which gave a positive message that truly everyone belonged.  And for a Catholic, who believes in a _universal church_ (that's what Catholic means), big enbough for everybody, what a nice message.  Parabens Senhor Saldanha!

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Chungui, horror sin lágrimas... una Historia Peruana (Chungui, a horror without tears ... a Peruvian story)

Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 stars)

IMDb listing - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1894431/

 Chungui, horror sin lágrimas... una Historia Peruana (directed by Felipe Degregori) is a Peruvian (Spanish / Quechua language with English subtitles) documentary that recently played at the 2011 Chicago Latino Film Festival about the return of anthropologist Edilberto Jiménez to his native land of Ayacucho in the mountains of central Peru to tell the story of sufferings of the inhabitants of the region of Chungui, a part of the Department of Ayacucho, devastated during the years of the Maoist-inspired Shining Path insurgency (1980-1995). 

Interviewing the native people, Jiménez took a page from the famed 16th century native Peruvian chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala who had included several hundred handmade illustrations in his great work El Primer Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno (First New Chronicle and Good Governance) addressed to the Spanish King to document and protest the mistreatment of the natives of Peru by the Spanish conquistadores.  Thus Jiménez similarly drew dozens of poignant illustrations of the terrors suffered by the inhabitants of Chungui at the hands by the Shining Path as well as Peruvian government counter-insurgency forces. 

As is often the case in civil wars, the utterly innocent natives were first terrorized by the Shining Path guerrillas into submission and then by government forces for collaborating with them.  Still, the horrors inflicted on the people by the Shining Path were of a category all its own: torturing people by slowly dismembering them and, yes, believe it or not, worse.  How any movement, much less one purporting to be a _progressive_ (a "shining") one, would descend into such a pit of evil is difficult to comprehend.  Yet, the Khmer Rouge (also Maoist in inspiration) in Cambodia perpetrated similar horrors.  Apparently, the "power" that comes "from a barrel of a gun" is a horrific one and the leaders of the Shining Path had lost all discipline over their cadres.

Also featured in the documentary was a Catholic priest, who was slowly rebuilding the devastated churches in the region.  He explained to Jiménez that initially he was restoring the altar pieces in ways featuring traditional Catholic themes.  However, as he heard more and more of the horrors suffered by the people during the Shining Path insurgency, he started to incorporate scenes from their Calvaries in his art as well, the result becoming scenes that could have been out of the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) or Dante's Inferno. 

This movie was not easy to watch and many in the audience when I saw it were in tears.  The contrast between a native people that dresses and decorates its otherwise humble abodes in such bright colors and the blood red horrors that they had to face at the hands of the uniformly black-uniformed Shining Path guerrillas was often difficult to bear.  Yet, Jiménez did not want the world to forget the sufferings of the people of his native land.


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Operación Diablo (Devil's Operation)

Fr. Dennis (3 stars)

Operación Diablo (directed by Stephanie Boyd) is a Peruvian (Spanish language, English subtitled) documentary that recently played at the 2011 Chicago Latino Film Festival regarding a discovery made by activists protesting operations at the Yanacocha gold mines in Peru operated by the Colorado based Newmont Mining Corporation.

Led by Father Marcos Arana, peasants had successfully blocked expansion of the mine in 2004 only to find that soon afterwards, leading activists, including Father Marcos were being tailed and videotaped by goons. Tired of this, Fr. Marcos chased down one of these spies with his car, called in authorities and discovered that a private intelligence firm named Forza had been hired (presumably by the Newmont Mining Co.) to follow and report on the activities of Fr. Marcos and the other activists. The sophistication of the operation, including minute to minute logs of the waking hour movements of the surveilled people along with pictures and charts stunned the authorities.  The matter was widely reported in the Peruvian press.

Forza had apparently been made up of former intelligence officers from the Fujimori era in Peru, left unemployed after Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was forced to resign in 2000 and was later jailed for corruption and human rights abuses. Forza was implicated in the torture and killing of activists protesting at another gold mine in another part of Peru. The tactics used by Forza on sequestered protesters there were reminiscent of those made infamous at Abu Gharib in Iraq.

Forza therefore becomes a Peruvian example of a growing worldwide phenomenon of the emergence of private intelligence-security firms like the American firm Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) the full ramifications of their emergence not yet fully understood.

Operación Diablo takes its name for the "code name" of "Diablo" (Devil) given to Fr. Marcos by agents of Forza in their operation of him and his colleagues. I found the movie to be both interesting and disconcerting.


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