Blancanieves [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  Roger Ebert (4 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars with Expl)

IMDb listing
Roger Ebert's review

Blancanieves [2012] (screenplay and directed by Pablo Berger) is an internationally critically acclaimed and award winning (including 10 Goya Awards, Spain's equivalent of the Oscars) b&w silent screen adaptation  of the Brothers Grimm fairytale Snow White set in and around turn-of-the-20th century Seville, Spain and in the context of that most Iberian of traditions Bull Fighting.  The film comes on the heels of the previous year's internationally critically acclaimed/award winning French b&w silent screen sensation The Artist [2011] as well as two other recent (indeed 2012) American treatments -- Mirror, Mirror [2012] and Snow White and the Huntsman [2012] -- of this particular story.

One could initially ask: what could this film possibly add?  Well simply from a stylistic point of view, it should be clear that Blancanieves [2012] seeks to put itself in a completely different realm of cinema (classic, in league with such masterpieces as Jean Cocteau's post WW-II The Beauty and the Beast (orig. La Belle et la Bête) [1946]) as compared to the far more "popular fare" treatments of the story by the two other films, which in a few years will almost certainly be largely forgotten.

More interestingly, arguably Blancanieves [2012] builds on the success of The Artist [2011], and "moves the ball" as it were. The Artist [2011] excellent though it was, was, above all, a nostalgia piece being at least as much about the "b&w silent screen era of cinema" itself as about telling a particular story (in the b&w silent screen idiom).  In contrast, IMHO Blancanieves [2012] actually seeks to tell a story choosing then to do so using the b&w silent screen medium.  Will the b&w silent screen medium prove suited to tell other stories in the future?  The answer obviously lies in the creativity and resourcefulness of cinematic artists.

So what is Blancanieves [2012] about?  The film seeks to follow the story of Grimm's Snow White story (Blancanieves means Snow White in Castilian Spanish) while placing the story in the context of turn of the 20th century Spanish bull-fighting.

The film begins with heroic, widely celebrated bullfighter Don Antonio Villarta (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho) praying before a classically Spanish statue of Our Lady of Sorrows, seven swords in her heart [cf. Luke 2:35 "And you yourself (Mary) a sword will pierce so that the hearts of many will be revealed" reflecting my own (Servite) Order's devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary] prior to entering into Seville's famous bull ring to take-up the challenge of taking-down 7 bulls in the course of the afternoon.

Don Antonio's wife, Carmen (played by Inma Cuesta) a former flamenco dancer (another classically Spanish archetype) now expecting their first child is (along with her mother) in the audience.

Don Antonio has no trouble defeating the first five bulls and seems to be about to slay the sixth, nicknamed Lucifer, when something goes wrong.  For a split second he's distracted (for actually a very contemporary reason, but it works for the time in question as well) and instead of slaying the bull (Lucifer), the bull gores him.  Horrified, Carmen, in the crowd faints.

After the stunned attendants on the field chase the bull away, Don Antonio is taken quickly to the hospital named again for Our Lady of Sorrows (which when one thinks about it, is actually a terrible name for a hospital ... ;-) ... the name actually would work better for a counseling center / memorial chapel.  One would probably prefer to go to a hospital called Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  But then this is a Spanish story / tragedy and the Spanish speaking world has also been known historically for its rather graphic depictions of Jesus crucified and very large/thorny crowns of thorns).

Carmen (who goes into in labor after she faints) is taken to the hospital as well.

Don Antonio is saved though paralyzed as a result of his injuries, while Carmen dies after giving birth to their daughter Carmencita.  In shock from his own injuries and the loss of his wife, Don Antonio can not bear to even take a look at the little newborn when she's brought to him.  Carmencita (played as a child by Sofia Oria) is thus raised for the first part of her life by her grandmother (Carmen's mother) while Don Antonio recovers and eventually marries his scheming nurse named Encarna (played by Maribel Verdú).

When Carmencita's grandmother dies suddenly (presumably of a heart attack after doing a flamenco dance) at Carmencita's first communion party, Carmencita is taken to her father, who's holed-up in a country estate named "Monte Olvido" (The Mountain of Forgetting / Abandonment), run now (presumably using Don Antonio's money) by Encarna (now to become Carmencita's wicked step-mother).  Indeed, in this part of the film, Carmencita's existence more resembles Cinderella's than Snow White's as she's forced to live in the basement of the estate, does all the hard chores of the house (even though she's only 7-8 years old) and she's never ever allowed to go to the second floor, where Don Antonio is holed-up, and probably doesn't even know that his daughter is now living below.

Eventually fate lends a hand through Carmencita's wandering pet chicken, who plays a role akin to the dog in The Artist [2011].  So Carmencita finds her way to the second floor (chasing after said wandering amiable chicken) and finds her father (paralyzed in a wheelchair) there.  While Don Antonio initially didn't even realize that his daughter was now living in the same compound as he, he's quickly able to put it together:  Carmencita looks kinda like her mother, already seems to be quite good at flamenco, and when she picks-up the toreador's cape there by Don Antonio's stuff recalling his glory days, she proves to be a natural.  Don Antonio, who's had no one to talk to for a very long time, teaches her a trick or two of the trade, even though, at this point, it's just for fun as Carmencita was both a girl (Toreadors were traditionally men and Spain was traditionally a very Macho country) and still "just a kid" (only about 8-9).

Well, eventually Encarna catches wind of Carmencita's having found her father upstairs (where Carmencita had been forbidden to go) and that the two were enjoying each other's company far more than she enjoyed either of them.  So (as a wicked person after all...) she can't bear the two enjoying each other's company that much.  So she asks a trusted servant (and lover?) to take good-old Carmencita out into the woods some distance off the estate and to kill her.  The servant can't bring himself to do so.  So Carmencita escapes...

This is when Fate lends another hand ... and Carmencita finds herself being picked-up and rescued by a traveling circus act calling itself "The Bullfighting Dwarfs" (dwarfs that would bull-fight, but, of course only calves...).  The rest of the film ensues ...

Obviously, eventually Carmencita grows-up with these dwarfs, and thus their act eventually becomes "The Toreadora and the 7 Bullfighting Dwarfs" and eventually they make it to the famed Plaza de Toros back in Seville.  There, an older but still very much wicked Encarna, who had figured out who this surprising and increasingly famous Toreadora had to be ... comes to visit her ... with an apple ...

Does the story work?  What do you think?  I honestly think it does, and certainly a good part of the film's charm is that it was made in the b&w silent screen style with generally only vintage (piano) music playing in the background.  Does the bullfighting in the story get old?  IMHO, it could, but there's enough variation to keep it fresh: (1) We see "the pro" at the beginning, (2) we see the little Carmencita playing with here dad, (3) we see the Dwarfs Bull Fighting against Calves and (4) we see the grown Carmencita taking on "a real bull" by the end ...

So this is a surprising movie folks and it reminds us of the storytelling possibilities available these days.  And yes it does make me wonder if between Blancanieves [2012] and The Artist [2011] preceding it, we're actually witnessing the beginning of a revival of this long thought dead (b&w silent screen) art form.  Can more be done with with it?  Who honestly knows?  A year ago, I would have thought The Artist [2011] would have been a one shot deal.  Now I'm no longer sure ;-).

And as a Servite priest, I can not but appreciate the film's repeated allusions to my (Servite) Order's Principal Patroness Our Lady of Sorrows (USA Province).

In any case great job folks, great job!


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La Playa D.C. [2012]

MPAA (UR would be R)   Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

La Playa D.C. [2012] (written and directed by Juan Andrés Arango Garcia) is a simple yet well crafted Afro-Colombian film playing Apr 26-May 3, 2013 at Facets Multimedia Theater in Chicago.  It's about an Afro-Colombian teenager named Tomás (played by Luis Carlos Guevara) whose family had recently migrated from the countryside to the slums at the outskirts of Bogota.  Why?  There'd be plenty of reasons: poverty/ongoing violence in the countryside, the death of (abandonment by) the father of the family, etc.  In any case, the family felt compelled to move, and as expected the move proved to be difficult.

With the father out of the picture, the mother had entered into a relationship with a Bogota local, a security guard with whom the children, above all, the story's central protagonist, teenage Tomás, had difficulty. Indeed, the conflict had proven so great that the film pretty much begins with the mother's new man giving her an ultimatum: Either Tomás leaves home or he's gonna leave her.  The mother with a new baby (presumably with her new man) and with few options, reluctantly asks Tomás to leave.

Tomás packs up his things (in what would be a single school backpack) and heads out.  He does have an older brother who lives on his own, in a single room (with simple mat for a bed) further in town.  The older brother talks to his landlady, explains to her the situation (above all that Tomás is a relation and not a potential lover), they make an arrangement and Tomás now has a roof over his head.

Much of what follows is about Tomás figuring out a way to make a livelihood.  Fortunately he did have a small talent/skill: he liked/knew how to draw.  Now normally that skill and a few bits of change would get you a cup of coffee... However, Tomás had the sense to turn that small skill into something that could make some money: he decided to try to become a barber offering to shave those those little pictures/designs that he'd draw into peoples hair for a small fee.  Even for this, however, he still needed to make some money -- to buy a few razor blades and then a set of electrical clippers.  Tomás made a deal with a somewhat more established barber and seemed to be on his way to make enough money to buy the electric clippers that the more established barber had lent him.

All would be wonderful (or at least more manageable) if not for Tomás having a younger brother, honestly no more than 10-12 years old, who had become addicted to Colombia's equivalent of crack cocaine.  At first, Tomás along with the rest of his family (including his mother who had thrown him out of her house) had been simply looking for this younger member of the family who had disappeared into the streets of Bogota soon after Tomás thrown out of the house.  Since Tomás had that skill of being able to draw, he even created some simple "missing child" posters that he put-up with moderate success around the neighborhood (some of the shopkeepers weren't too keen these "missing child" posters near their stores (they tended to depress people or make the neighborhood appear more dangerous than they would have liked it to appear).

But when Tomás finds his brother, new problems arise.  After all, Tomás' younger brother is addicted to drugs which cost money, money that really no one in Tomás' family had.  So here's Tomás trying to hustle up enough business with his borrowed clippers and a few razors cutting/shaving designs into people's hair hoping to eventually save enough money to buy those clippers from the good man who had lent them to him.  IN THE MEANTIME there's his younger brother consuming more crack than he could pay for ... with thugs (not particularly big thugs but enough of them) beginning to circle 'round Tomás to try to shake him down for the money that his younger brother owed.  What a nightmare... Eventually something has to give, and it does ...

La Playa D.C. is a sad but obviously poignant glimpse into the struggles of a simple afro-Colombian family living at the edge (margins) of a big city in Colombia today.  It's also a reminder how drug addiction, already a problem when a family has some means, becomes an almost unbearable burden (and certainly life and death struggle) when one's family is poor.  All in all a very good if very sad film.


ADDENDUM - My religious order, the Servants of Mary, has its own experience working in Latin America (Brazil) with families already facing marginalization and difficult circumstances struggling on top of that with drug addiction at the home.  Here's a link to a chapter on the subject from the book produced by the Brazilian Servites on The Amazonia We Do Not Know (2006). 

 
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Mud [2012]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
RogerEbert.com (J. Emerson) review

Mud [2012] (written and directed by Jeff Nichols) is a small well acted/crafted "indie" style film set in a small random hamlet in Arkansas along the banks of the (Great) Mississippi River.  As such, "small in scope" as the film may be, it immediately evokes the grandeur of  "Old Man River" and the legacy of America's greatest story teller, Mark Twain.

Does the film live up to such "Great Potentialities" if not "Expectations?"  Well Mark Twain / Huck Finn it is not, indeed, can not be, but IMHO the film's both small/intimate enough and its thematics universal enough to do quite well.  And certainly the film is worthy of the interests of actor Matthew McConaughey who can definitely ham-it-up in crowd-pleasing / blockbuster fare like Magic Mike [2012] or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past [2009] but also appears interested in taking on roles in IMHO far more interesting "Southern Noir"-ish projects such as in Bernie [2012], Killer Joe [2012] (a film that I do believe "crossed the line" but at least there was "a line to cross" ... ) and The Paperboy [2012].

The current film centers on two 14 year old boys, Ellis (played by Tye Sheridan) and his best friend nick-named "Neckbone" (played by Jacob Lofland) from said small hamlet who are growing-up with their parents/kin, living in houseboats perched along the River (hence the River necessarily plays a BIG role in their lives).  One day, while exploring along the river on their little motorboat, the two encounter a drifter (played by Matthew McConaughey). When asked by the boys for his name, the drifter introduces himself as Mud.  He's been sleeping in a boat that due to a previous flood is holed-up in a tree on a random island along the Mississippi.  Looking at him with one pair of clothing and small convenience store plastic bag of groceries to his name, one of the two 14 year-olds mutters under his breath "Bum."  "Excuse me, I'm a hobo.  Presently, I may be homeless but I work and pay for my keep!"  Indeed, one day, as the two boys progressively begin to trust / befriend the curious Mud, he has a cooler of already gutted and cut-up fish for them to take back to town to sell for him...

Okay, so what's a guy in his late 20s-early 30s doing living in a boat holed-up in the tree on some random island along the Mississippi River somewhere in Arkansas?   Well, there's obviously a story and the story's obviously, at least in part, rather seamy and not particularly great for 14 year olds to hear.  On the other hand, they're 14 and as long as they keep some distance from said "bum/hobo" named Mud, they get to learn a little about life ... life that they themselves, living in houseboats at the edge of a small Arkansas town along the Mississippi River, are already living somewhat "on the margins." 

Between what Mud himself tells them, and what they hear over time from others, the boys (as well as the viewers) piece together the (Mud's) story: There's a young woman involved, Juniper (played by Resse Witherspoon).  There's also a recluse/distant relation of Mud's, a retired former Marine sharpshooter named Tom Blankenship (played by Sam Shepard) who actually lives somewhat close to Ellis' family if "across the channel" (already on an island).  He knows Mud and has been "looking after him" if at a distance since Mud's teenage years and (for reasons unclear / I don't entirely remember anymore... ;-) the breakup of Mud's family.

Ex-marine sniper (and literally "uncle Tom" ;-) Blankenship thinks Mud's girlfriend has been "nothing but trouble."  He explains to the boys that Mud's been in love with her for years and that Juniper "kinda loves him back."  But then "she's flighty" hanging out with the biggest dregs of society (probably part of the reason she kinda likes Mud as well ...) and then depends on Mud to come along and "save her" from the mess that she's created.

Well, the last time when Mud came to clean-up a Mess that Juniper created, he ended-up killing a young man of Mud's / Juniper's age, a man whose father holds grudges.  Hence Mud's living in a "tree house boat" on a non-descript island along the Mississippi being helped by two 14 year olds, because he's wanted for murdering a well-connected a-h... who was hitting on a young woman who can't decide whether or not she loves Mud (or could love Mud) anyway.

What a murky/muddy Mess ... ;-).  Anyway, dead a-h...'s father has bounty hunters out looking for Mud and staking-out Juniper's residence as well.  Something has to give ... And, of course, it does.   The rest of the movie ensues ...

What a simple and yet great story about life-lessons and growing up!  True, this is not exactly a story for girls/young women as they not necessarily portrayed well in this story even if Ellis' mother Mary Lee (played by Sarah Paulson) is portrayed quite nicely/positively.  Still it's not necessarily a bad lesson for either boys or girls to least: Just because you like/are attracted somebody doesn't make them a good person.  At times, you have to step back and look at them for what they really are.

So I just found this film to be great.  It reminds us that a good story doesn't need a high budget / great special effects to sell.  In the tradition of the great story-teller Mark Twain, a good story can sell itself ... 


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Pain and Gain [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  S. Adams (2 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
RogerEbert.com (S. Adams) review

Pain and Gain [2013] (directed by Michael Bay, screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely based on the magazine reporting on the case in question of Pete Collins) is about such a searingly crass (but unbelievably true) crime story that it probably justifies making some kind of film about it.  Yet the violence (again often boneheadedly executed) does get to such hard-R levels that the film is definitely not for the squeamish.

The film, set in the mid-1990s, is about Miami body builder, South Florida trendy fitness gym trainer Daniel Lugo (played in the film by Mark Wahlberg) who had always lived by a "no gain without pain" weightlifting ethos.  As a result, Danny gets sick of hearing a scrawny, balding, 60ish, not even close to benching his weight, 1/2 Colombian 1/2 Jewish businessman client of his, named Victor Kershaw (played by Tony Shalhoub) bragging about all the money, hot cars, hot boats and hot women he has.

After going to one of those those "Get Rich by Sheer Will" motivational seminars headlined by "Johnny Wu" (played hilariously by Ken Jeong), Danny decides that he's a "Doer" rather than a "Don't-er," and comes up with a "3 fingered plan" -- (1) come up with an idea, (2) execute (DO) IT and (3) "F-U all you suckers /  live life rich afterwards!" -- to (1) kidnap said Victor Kershaw, (2) get him to sign away ALL OF HIS MONEY (cars, homes and boats...) to him and (3) dispose of Victor. 

To help him kidnap Victor, Danny assembles a small crew, including himself and fellow gym-trainers Adrian Doorbal (played by Anthony Mackie) who needs some extra cash because his constant steroid use has finally made his (blank...) inoperative (given him E.D...), and a reasonably good-hearted but not even close to (or even in the same neighborhood as) "the sharpest tool in the shed," buff former ex-con named Paul Doyle (played by Dwayne Johnson).  Much, often involving stunning ineptitude, ensues...

So despite "almost" getting away with it all ... they don't.  Victor, survives his ordeal, hires a private-eye (played by Ed Harris) after Miami police, after seeing his Colombian background don't want much to do with his case ... and the three get caught, two of which Daniel and Adrian, finally getting the death penalty for their crimes (no kidding and by the end, they've racked-up enough of a list that by law they've more than crossed the threshhold...), while Paul, a good if stupid, stupid soul, gets 15-years and a life of forever saying that he's really, really, yes, really sorry.

If one isn't reminded -- at the beginning, in a key point in the middle and at the end of the story -- that this film really is based on a true story, one would simply not believe it.

Finally, I would say that along with the recent film Spring Breakers [2012], the film does remind viewers in a stark, indeed searing, sort of way, that "money isn't everything."  But are we so utterly stoned/desensitized as as society that we have to be reminded of this in such an utterly unforgettable sort of way?


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The Big Wedding [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O) I. Vishnevetsky (1 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (0 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
RogerEbert.com (I. Vishnevetsky) review

It's approaching wedding season in the U.S., so "wedding" themed movies are to be expected.  However, honestly, unless your own wedding/marriage proved a disaster (over 1/2 the marriages in the United States end in divorce, and though domestic violence is at times a reason (and a justifiable one - if one beats or otherwise truly abuses one's spouse one obviously doesn't know what a marriage is supposed to be), the vast majority of the times divorce comes when one or the other party convinces themselves that their partner is simply a disappointment in one way or another - or just plain getting old - and convinces oneself that one could still "trade up" somehow) I wouldn't recommend  The Big Wedding [2013] (written and directed by Justin Zackham) to anybody.

Particularly galling to someone like me is that the families in the film are supposed to be Catholic, not random religion, but CATHOLIC.  Okay, one of the families is racist.  Are there racists in the Catholic Church?   I can with ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE BASED ON MY PASTORAL MINISTRY SAY _YES_.  NO DOUBT, NONE.  There CERTAINLY ARE racists in the Catholic Church in this country AND A FAIR NUMBER OF THEM (certainly not all but far more than one really ought to be at all comfortable with).  But having said that, it gets "complicated": 

For one, half the Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic.  Add to those non-white Catholics, Catholics from Asia -- the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, a non-inconsequential number of Catholics from India and from the Middle East (Lebanon, Iraq, even more recently Syria), then Catholics from Africa (the Congo, much of West Africa), the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba as well as from some of the smaller islands) and then African American Catholics with family roots in Louisiana (which actually was the only predominantly Catholic slave state in 'the Old South') ... the substantial majority of Catholics in the United States are NO LONGER WHITE. 

Then let's go through what the Protestant majority in this country has called the various Catholic immigrant groups that have come to this fair land over its history:  The Irish were "drunks," the Italians were "crooks," the Poles (there isn't a building of consequence standing in Chicago that wasn't built largely by Poles) were "stupid," and, of course, the Hispanics coming over the Rio Grande or on boats from Cuba and Haiti are "crooks" (okay the Cubans are generally anti-communists, so we put a flag in their hands first and then call them "drug dealing crooks") as well.  That's why we have to build a wall between us and our southern borders.  Oh, yes, and young Hispanic women, like "Alejandro's sister" in this film are _also_ "sluts."

Add to this that while there are actually quite a few prominent Catholic-Jewish interfaith couples in America today, I can think of EXACTLY ZERO prominent Protestant-Jewish couples today.  Why?  My sense is that lived-out Catholicism is actually far closer to Judaism than Protestantism is to either: Catholicism is NOT MERELY theology/doctrine.  Like Judaism, Catholicism is a way of life. There are seasons, there are feast days, there are traditions and there are ALWAYS opportunities to celebrate key milestones in the lives of the (individual) faithful in the context (and with the blessing) of the Church. 

So Mr. Zachham, who my friend is being a racist?

And I honestly find it hard to believe that Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton, Susan Sarandon, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfreid and Robin Williams (who I've liked for most of my life) would associate themselves with such a blatantly racist anti-Catholic picture such as this.


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Tlatelolco, Summer of 68 (orig. Tlatelolco, Verano del 68) [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing

Tlatelolco, Summer of 68 (orig. Tlatelolco, Verano del 68) [2013] (directed by Carlos Bolado, script by Carolina Rivera along with Luis Felipe Ybarra and Carlos Bolado) is an well written/crafted and certainly significant Mexican historical drama surrounding the events surrounding the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre [Wkpd-ESP]* of at least 300 possibly thousands of Mexican students in Mexico City, just 10 days prior to the opening of the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games.  The film played recently to repeatedly sold out audiences at the 29th Chicago Latino Film Festival. 

This tragedy, indeed Tiananmen-style crime, had been quickly buried (the blood quite literally hosed away...) by Mexico's authorities wishing to present a welcoming/peaceful (and above all "in control") face to the 1968 Summer Games even as the rest of the world (from the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in the United States, to street protests against the U.S.-led War in Vietnam across the United States and Western Europe, to the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia) seemed to be in chaos.

This was also an event like the Cristero Rebellion (that finally brought the chaos of the Mexican Revolution to an end) that was both KNOWN BY JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY IN MEXICO but NOT PUBLICLY DISCUSSED (let alone taught in schools...) until after the year 2000 (more than 30 years later...) when Vicente Fox became the first non-PRI candidate to be elected President of Mexico since the end of the Mexican Revolution in the 1920s. 

I first heard of the Tlatelolco Massacre [Wkpd-ESP]* from my teacher when I was in Guadalajara to learn Spanish back in the late 1990s.  She presented it to me as precisely a Tienanmen-style massacre that no one outside of Mexico knew about and no one inside Mexico was allowed to openly discuss.  Her parents were students, in Guadalajara, at the time... The lack of opportunity, indeed "permission" to discuss this event in decades past, help explain the sold-out crowds when the film was shown at the Latino Film Festival here in Chicago (Chicago having the largest Mexican-American population in the United States, second only to Los Angeles).  This was first film of its kind (other than a documentary made only a few years previous) about the massacre. 

The film makers for their part did IMHO a very good job in presenting the human complexities/tragedy of this story.  Thankfully they felt no need to further propagandize the story to promote any particular current agenda, as the tragedy of the story told itself:  Those who were massacred were students.  Hence, even though they were to some extent "elite," they also came from a broad base of society.  Mixed among those students protesting (and later being shot...) were sons and daughters of both those in power AND those who (like the world over) were the first ones from their families who've made it to college.

Indeed the two central protagonists in the film were (1) Maria Elena (played by Cassandra Ciangherotti) who was portrayed as coming from a rich family and the daughter of Ernesto (played by Juan Manuel Bernal) portrayed as a significant if still upper-mid-level government official at the Ministry of the Interior and whose grandfather Flavio (played by Juan Carlos Colombo) had been a hero of the Mexican Revolution and (2) Felix (played by Christian Vasquez) who was an architecture student at the Instituto Polytecnico in Mexico City, the first from his family to make it to college and whose older brother Paco (played by Armando Hernández) was a plainclothes policeman in Mexico City.  BOTH Maria Elena's father and especially Felix' brother warned their idealistic kin to avoid/stop participating in the student demonstrations that were growing in Mexico City during the summer of 1968, telling them these demonstrations could only end badly.  Of course they didn't stop participating in the protests, and of course their more informed kin were right ...


It's a real tragedy and those who did die deserve to be remembered.  To be honest (and writing now with the perspective of a 50 year old ... ;-), I'm not sure what the students would have necessarily accomplished if they had succeeded (it's one thing to protest the way things are, it's another to actually know how to fix it...).

On the other hand, for the sake of a "calm" Olympics, Mexico's authorities decided to have them as "tranquil as a cemetery ..." and what would it have really mattered if they had just let the students protest?  Mexico would have been "just like every other place (free) at the time."  Instead, Mexico's authorities showed themselves, at least for that generation, as "unable to bend."  And one wonders what contributions to Mexico's society (and indeed to the world) were lost among all those students (300 to as many as 3000) who were shot dead... so that the 1968 Olympics could be "calm" (even as the world's athletes themselves made protests against both superpowers anyway...). 


* Immediate machine translation of foreign (in this case Spanish) language links are generally best viewed using Google's Chrome browser.


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Florbela [2012]

MPAA (UR would R)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing

Florbela [2012] (written and directed by Vicente Alves do Ó) is an award winning biopic about Florbela Espanca [PT]* (played in the film by Dalila Carmo) an early 20th century Portuguese proto-feminist poet with a typical for artists of the time difficult/troubled life.  The film played recently at the 29th Chicago Latino Film Festival.

The film begins in 1925 with the beginning of her marriage (her third at still only 30) to Mário Lage (played in the film by Albano Jerónimo), the reason for the dissolution of her first marriage unclear but the second being because her husband beat her.

Needless to say to have been married three times in the 1920s in a traditionally Catholic country like Portugal would have exposed her to a great deal of social criticism.  Yet, from the beginning, her life was a tormented mess.  She was the daughter of a maid-servant and though adopted by the family for whom her mother worked, her actual paternity remained unclear until after her death.  

Mário Lage's estate was in the countryside by the sea.  She would have been largely sheltered from the social criticism that she faced if she stayed there.  However, she was close to her adoptive brother Apeles Espanca (played in the film by Ivo Canelas) and thus returned back to Lisbon to be with him after the tragic death of Apeles' fiancee.  It also allowed her to go back to some of writing, even though, as a tormented introvert, she didn't allow most of her work to be published while she was still alive.

After Apeles died tragically in a plane crash (was it suicide? no one ever really knew for sure) she returned back to her father João Espanca (played in the film by António Fonseca) where she twice apparently tried committing suicide as well (in the film, one attempt is shown as she tries jumping down a well).  Eventually she died, on Dec 8, 1930 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and also her 36th birthday), officially of tristeza (sadness).

Yet today, her works, tormented/sad, are considered some of the most significant Portuguese poetry of her time.  Some of it is available (in Portuguese) online.  Those who read some Spanish or Italian could probably understand some of it.  What I've read is quite lovely, if also very, very sad.

So Florbela's life seemed to have been tormented mess.  And yet, this seems par for the course for many artists and intellectuals of the early 20th century.  The film, a "period piece," certainly shows the sounds and styles of the time exquisitely and even hints at the foreboding nature of the time.  After all, these were the years between the two World Wars and just a few years before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War which took place next door.  Florbela appeared to be completely apolitical but as someone more or less obviously prone to depression certainly had to be effected by the atmosphere around her.

That artists are often very sensitive (and rather sad/tormented) people is an insight that Italian director Paolo Sorrentino recently applied in his film This Must be the Place [2011] to help understand some of the strange and rather depressed behavior of some of the 1960s-80s era Rock Stars: Why did some of these "Rock Gods" write so many lyrics that were so sad?  Well, Sorrentino's insight was that artists throughout the ages were often very sad, sensitive people.  In anycase, Florbela's life appears to be a clear testament to this view.

Now someone who was married three times (and later tried committing suicide at least twice) could not have been at that time particularly religious in the sense of that time.  (Yet, the film indicated that after the death of her brother, she did put herself in front of an altar to Mary offering her a flower).  When considering  someone who's endured so many difficulties in life (and add to that had a sensitive disposition to begin with) it honestly becomes very hard to judge.

In any case, this is a beautiful if often very, very sad film.


* Immediate machine translation of foreign (in this case Portuguese) language links are generally best viewed using Google's Chrome browser.


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