***
Rapid fire short reviews, lessgo!
-The Battle of Ambos, Nogales is an amateur short interpreting the 1918 conflict that led to the first border wall between the United States and Mexico through music, film, and dance. A lot of the techniques at play are those you'd expect from a first-time production (particularly the way footage occasionally reverses, and the deliberate over-saturation to the point of eradicating all colors save glaring white in many shots), but it's interesting how they dug into the the loss of life and human cost of the event without making much of the actual fighting. The twirling specter of death and fire dancer who marks the last frame by dancing out of sight are rather nice touches, and it'd be neat to see what the creators do once properly established five or ten years down the line. I would've liked a cleaner view of the short, considering the file seemed mildly corrupted, but the jerky nature of presentation adds to the feel of something fully home-grown when contrasted against the more polished material presented afterwards.
-Loving South (advertised as Minuteman on the site, and noted by director Oliver Rendon as having undergone multiple title changes at the screening) is a slice of a border patrol agent's evening as he goes about his tasks between picking up groups of illegals crossing the border. There's racially-charged, xenophobic talk over his radio, but he himself seems the sort of man to just do his job, dropping off a young man he caught before the start without a word, and calmly accepting the next assignment at the end. In the seven minutes in-between, we watch him putter about his sparse trailer, attending to chores and putting his thoughts in order with minimal commentary. He's in-between spaces here, with none of the hats his job requires worn at home, and it's quite an interesting perspective to take. Maybe there's some sadness to his movements, maybe willful obliviousness to the larger system he engages in, maybe he's just taken a job to try and keep his house in order. Whatever it is, when he's not out in the field and just doing ordinary tasks about his bland domicile, he's still just a guy all the same.
-El pulso de la tierra (The Pulse of the Earth) was a little hard for me to watch, due to the up-close horse castration scene, complete with dog eating the freshly severed testicle at the end. The frankness with which Fernando Alvarez presents the event, though, coupled with the short as a whole's tendency towards getting in tune with the natural world through appreciating horses, helps it feel more natural. We're making a point about the ebb and flow of life out on the ranch, to the point of having sex in the middle of the desert shortly after the castration scene, so why not film it with such up-front honesty? I was more than OK with the skinning scene in Aga yesterday, so I should be down with this castration scene - it's something ranch-hands do as a matter of course all the time, so why should I feel compelled to look away?
-Figures that in a group of shorts with tons of extended periods of silence and minimal dialogue, the one with heaviest on narration to the point of demanding your comprehension to get the most out of it (like, y'know, pretty much anything with narration) is the one with no subtitles. Curse you, shoddy high school foreign language programs. Fortunately, Juan Hernandez's Bajo el Agua (Underwater) is also a very well-shot compilation of black-and-white landscape shots and close-ups, with an obvious throughline of a woman discussing memories of her father, so while I couldn't understand a full sentence of narration, the emotional impact hit me all the same. I really appreciate the shots of a decrepit house in the midst of a lake, the studies of an old man's face that creep in as the short goes on, and the way shots of a woman I presume stands in for the narrator increasingly come into focus before a fully-sharp image right before we watch her once-more-blurry figure walk into the sunset. S'a good experience, regardless of whether you're behind the language barrier, and I fully understand the mix-up regarding subtitles when they were also showing this down in Sonora, where English-as-a-first-language/non-Spanish-speaking audiences are a minority, if present at all.
-José López Aramburo's Camuco was, unfortunately, not shown due to technical difficulties. Alas.
***
Santiago Maza knows exactly what he has in Los Truenos de San Juan (The Thunderers of San Juan). A good documentary needs a strong, unique hook to get you drawn in as soon as possible, and as hooks go, San Juan de la Vega's annual festival in tribute to San Juan Bautista is among the more immediately eye-catching. Few religious ceremonies involve sledgehammers with illegal flashbang powder on the head being swung into the ground thousands of times over the course of several days, producing a deafening, thunder-like bang with each impact. For all his focus on the cultural context and the reasons why people are so willing to risk limbs to celebrate in this way, Maza knows the allure of metal blasting powder against solid ground and rail irons is deeply, almost primally compelling, and so makes sure to seed his documentary with regular footage of anonymous townsfolk slamming sledges and producing white powder clouds in the aftermath. What passes for climax in the documentary format even involves a long montage of hammer slammers cut and scored to classical music, peaking with a train running over dozens of powder bags in a row.
I wouldn't have many words for Los Truenos de San Juan if it were just about the joys of detonation, and Maza brings along a fair amount extra. He explores the less explosively spectacular aspects of the festival with roaming tours of its reenactments of historical events said to have involved San Juanito. The people who produce the powder bags are given ample time to discuss their tradition, how they've seen it develop over their lifetimes, and voice their concerns about whether or not the children will take up their mantle in the coming years. There's a good deal of footage showing certain prominent members of the community negotiating with the police for safer practices, while still working a little under the table to ensure things aren't too restricted. Interrogation of larger issues pertaining to the town's unwillingness to cooperate with the law or willingness to put up with the harm that does befall those who get unlucky or judge their strike wrong is fairly minimal, but I still go with the documentary for exploring a unique subject I did not know about prior to watching with a decently comprehensive eye.
It's one of those docs where you definitely walk in on promise of b-roll footage, and stay for the stories and personalities. What interrogation Maza does engage in reveals a community with a strong love of their tradition and a belief in the need to carry it on regardless of danger, tempered... or, since tempering implies strengthening, perhaps broadened... by the youthful wrecklessnesss necessary to swing a heavy weighted tool into shatterable rocks or bouncing steel beams with some pretty strong explosive substances in-between. One might not learn much about the big picture around any of the issues it touches on, but one learns more than plenty about a slice of culture that often doesn't get this level of focus, and learns in an up-close and personal way too. S'nice spending eighty minutes in this town, learning about its traditions and seeing the people exercise their practices. And it all goes boom in the end with enjoyable frequency, so you're not liable to nod off while watching either!
I wouldn't have many words for Los Truenos de San Juan if it were just about the joys of detonation, and Maza brings along a fair amount extra. He explores the less explosively spectacular aspects of the festival with roaming tours of its reenactments of historical events said to have involved San Juanito. The people who produce the powder bags are given ample time to discuss their tradition, how they've seen it develop over their lifetimes, and voice their concerns about whether or not the children will take up their mantle in the coming years. There's a good deal of footage showing certain prominent members of the community negotiating with the police for safer practices, while still working a little under the table to ensure things aren't too restricted. Interrogation of larger issues pertaining to the town's unwillingness to cooperate with the law or willingness to put up with the harm that does befall those who get unlucky or judge their strike wrong is fairly minimal, but I still go with the documentary for exploring a unique subject I did not know about prior to watching with a decently comprehensive eye.
It's one of those docs where you definitely walk in on promise of b-roll footage, and stay for the stories and personalities. What interrogation Maza does engage in reveals a community with a strong love of their tradition and a belief in the need to carry it on regardless of danger, tempered... or, since tempering implies strengthening, perhaps broadened... by the youthful wrecklessnesss necessary to swing a heavy weighted tool into shatterable rocks or bouncing steel beams with some pretty strong explosive substances in-between. One might not learn much about the big picture around any of the issues it touches on, but one learns more than plenty about a slice of culture that often doesn't get this level of focus, and learns in an up-close and personal way too. S'nice spending eighty minutes in this town, learning about its traditions and seeing the people exercise their practices. And it all goes boom in the end with enjoyable frequency, so you're not liable to nod off while watching either!
***
(Warning: Bad writing ahead.)
Frankly, I think A Day Without a Mexican has too much going on for its own good. The film, about a mysterious pink fog descending around California and causing all persons of Hispanic descent to vanish without a trace, already has the baseline thesis of showing how vital those from south of the border are to the local economy in a humorous way. It already chooses to express this through an ensemble narrative looking at, among other things, a woman whose Mexican husband and half-Mexican son vanished while her half-Mexican daughter remained behind, and her sister who tries to take advantage of the moment to push her apocalyptic religious beliefs on others; a Hispanic reporter who seems to be the last Latina in California and the massive media circus around her survival; an old rancher with a xenophobic son who finds his family ties tested by the economic crisis; a Senator tires to use the situation to ascend to the governorship while his family struggles with having to work like normal people; and a set of border patrol agents whose lives are upended by the lack of illegal immigrants to chase after. All of these storylines are required to be straight-up humorous, ironically sincere, and genuinely emotional at various points in the film, all cross over with one another at some point, and I'm pretty sure I've missed one or two plot threads in here. This is the "what the film already has going on" paragraph.
In addition to all of this, director Sergio Arau slathers the film with a grab-bag of asides, genre digressions, and editing oddities that confuse the tone something awful. Many characters have a background in news media, so we are afforded frequent glimpses into what television has become without contact to the outside world. The result is a mishmash of desperate reaches for content, wild conspiracy theories played for laughs, a man who looks like John Goodman in The Big Lewbowski ranting about statistics inside a cheap TV frame, and occasional dips into mockumentary footage. Despite this framing device, the film also makes time for quick little montages of California descending into chaos separate from the media's watchful eye, with a few skits repeating throughout. When these asides become mainline intersections with the plot, they produce bizarre subplots like the government planning increasingly bizarre experiments on the surviving reporter under the supervision of a crackpot TV scientist. Through this all, the film makes frequent pauses to throw up informative title cards after a particularly misinformed or stupid-sounding line, to make sure we know the score on whatever was just said. These many, MANY chunks of content produce frequent laughs, but I have a hard time saying they're particularly graceful in their style.
Normally, I'd hit the wrap-up point ans say A Day Without a Mexican is an overstuffed, unfocused package that holds together mostly because it has so much going and trades in such cheap hooks, it'd be hard for something to NOT land every now and then. It gets into some convoluted territory towards the end for reaching the "now is when we are serious and make our big points" moments, but rallies around a perfectly ludicrous moment for a finale, and earns some respect for digging up so much to throw at the wall. Review done, publish button pressed.
Thing is, after watching at the border last night, several people called it a great movie, asked me if I thought so too, and I responded, "Yes." My intent here is to give the film a 2.5 or a 3, which I would normally not qualify as a great movie. Why respond in such a manner, beyond the obvious answer of, "There's no reason to pull down people who enjoyed a film more than you did, and keeping the conversation light is more important than spitting out your full critical opinion right then and there"? Honestly, two things. One, while I don't think Arau and Yareli Arizmendi's script is particularly smart or graceful, and do in fact find it broad to the point of trying to embody every single joke you could make about the border situation in 2004 at the expense of a consistent tone, it IS written in response to a complicated international relations problem that is frequently boiled down to "Those people bad, keep they out" by proponents of quick, "easy" solutions both then and now. In its way, a film which looks at this situation, determines to find the comedy beneath the surface, and goes about the task with every tool it can manage at a downright manic pace is making the reasonable choice. Flinging out actually informative statistics alongside snarky asides like "Contrary to popular belief, Israel is NOT part of Mexico," asking serious-minded characters to stand next to broad prop comedy, being anything and everything under the sun related to migrants across the US/Mexico border accurately reflects the reality of the situation, and makes double mockery of those who think simply throwing up a higher wall is the answer when there are so, so many factors at play.
And that's really the other reason I felt compelled to agree A Day Without a Mexican is great where I wouldn't otherwise: the wall. As with El Norte last year, where the story of two siblings trying to survive after an illegal border crossing was enhanced by facing away from the wall and hearing the soundtrack duplicated from across the line, watching this picture with the barrier that stands as symbol for every ignorant and hateful attitude it rails against right behind the screen makes its otherwise cheesily-delivered message more impactful. You tear your eye from the picture for a moment, look through the slats, and see, as it argues somewhat inarticulaely, yes, there ARE people on the other side just like any other, watching this kinda dumb movie and having a great time when surrounded by others. With the stretch of wall in Nogales featuring yet more barbed-wire than it did at this time last year, and with international relations ever-deteriorating under the Trump administration, it's worth taking the time to be there and think about how, for all the anger and complex factors making any simple solutions impossible and dangerous to entertain, so much of what has fueled the fires over the last century has been little more than needless hatred towards people whose place of birth means they call themselves Mexicans where we call ourselves Americans.
It's a weird way to defend a film, I know, and I've descended into inarticulate, wide-swiping techniques myself in trying to do so. Saying the film makes a good experience and a proper capper to a day of films in Nogales because it reminds you of how simple and complex the situation is seems paradoxical. The alchemical processes by which a film I wouldn't otherwise like too much becomes a great time are weird and convoluted and not for a mind that has been operating on very little sleep of late to properly understand. I can just ramble it all out onto the page, hope it makes sense, and say we really should be trying to smooth out the process of border crossing with more ports of entry and attempts at foreign diplomacy focused on addressing the reasons people come here rather than just throwing up more defenses and encouraging a culture of xenophobia. That's all. G'night!
(Best joke in this movie is the sleazy salesman's commercial hawking all the leftover merchandise. Seen those guys on local TV one too many times.)
2.5/5 for the film, 5/5 for the experience.
In addition to all of this, director Sergio Arau slathers the film with a grab-bag of asides, genre digressions, and editing oddities that confuse the tone something awful. Many characters have a background in news media, so we are afforded frequent glimpses into what television has become without contact to the outside world. The result is a mishmash of desperate reaches for content, wild conspiracy theories played for laughs, a man who looks like John Goodman in The Big Lewbowski ranting about statistics inside a cheap TV frame, and occasional dips into mockumentary footage. Despite this framing device, the film also makes time for quick little montages of California descending into chaos separate from the media's watchful eye, with a few skits repeating throughout. When these asides become mainline intersections with the plot, they produce bizarre subplots like the government planning increasingly bizarre experiments on the surviving reporter under the supervision of a crackpot TV scientist. Through this all, the film makes frequent pauses to throw up informative title cards after a particularly misinformed or stupid-sounding line, to make sure we know the score on whatever was just said. These many, MANY chunks of content produce frequent laughs, but I have a hard time saying they're particularly graceful in their style.
Normally, I'd hit the wrap-up point ans say A Day Without a Mexican is an overstuffed, unfocused package that holds together mostly because it has so much going and trades in such cheap hooks, it'd be hard for something to NOT land every now and then. It gets into some convoluted territory towards the end for reaching the "now is when we are serious and make our big points" moments, but rallies around a perfectly ludicrous moment for a finale, and earns some respect for digging up so much to throw at the wall. Review done, publish button pressed.
Thing is, after watching at the border last night, several people called it a great movie, asked me if I thought so too, and I responded, "Yes." My intent here is to give the film a 2.5 or a 3, which I would normally not qualify as a great movie. Why respond in such a manner, beyond the obvious answer of, "There's no reason to pull down people who enjoyed a film more than you did, and keeping the conversation light is more important than spitting out your full critical opinion right then and there"? Honestly, two things. One, while I don't think Arau and Yareli Arizmendi's script is particularly smart or graceful, and do in fact find it broad to the point of trying to embody every single joke you could make about the border situation in 2004 at the expense of a consistent tone, it IS written in response to a complicated international relations problem that is frequently boiled down to "Those people bad, keep they out" by proponents of quick, "easy" solutions both then and now. In its way, a film which looks at this situation, determines to find the comedy beneath the surface, and goes about the task with every tool it can manage at a downright manic pace is making the reasonable choice. Flinging out actually informative statistics alongside snarky asides like "Contrary to popular belief, Israel is NOT part of Mexico," asking serious-minded characters to stand next to broad prop comedy, being anything and everything under the sun related to migrants across the US/Mexico border accurately reflects the reality of the situation, and makes double mockery of those who think simply throwing up a higher wall is the answer when there are so, so many factors at play.
And that's really the other reason I felt compelled to agree A Day Without a Mexican is great where I wouldn't otherwise: the wall. As with El Norte last year, where the story of two siblings trying to survive after an illegal border crossing was enhanced by facing away from the wall and hearing the soundtrack duplicated from across the line, watching this picture with the barrier that stands as symbol for every ignorant and hateful attitude it rails against right behind the screen makes its otherwise cheesily-delivered message more impactful. You tear your eye from the picture for a moment, look through the slats, and see, as it argues somewhat inarticulaely, yes, there ARE people on the other side just like any other, watching this kinda dumb movie and having a great time when surrounded by others. With the stretch of wall in Nogales featuring yet more barbed-wire than it did at this time last year, and with international relations ever-deteriorating under the Trump administration, it's worth taking the time to be there and think about how, for all the anger and complex factors making any simple solutions impossible and dangerous to entertain, so much of what has fueled the fires over the last century has been little more than needless hatred towards people whose place of birth means they call themselves Mexicans where we call ourselves Americans.
It's a weird way to defend a film, I know, and I've descended into inarticulate, wide-swiping techniques myself in trying to do so. Saying the film makes a good experience and a proper capper to a day of films in Nogales because it reminds you of how simple and complex the situation is seems paradoxical. The alchemical processes by which a film I wouldn't otherwise like too much becomes a great time are weird and convoluted and not for a mind that has been operating on very little sleep of late to properly understand. I can just ramble it all out onto the page, hope it makes sense, and say we really should be trying to smooth out the process of border crossing with more ports of entry and attempts at foreign diplomacy focused on addressing the reasons people come here rather than just throwing up more defenses and encouraging a culture of xenophobia. That's all. G'night!
(Best joke in this movie is the sleazy salesman's commercial hawking all the leftover merchandise. Seen those guys on local TV one too many times.)
2.5/5 for the film, 5/5 for the experience.
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