Sin Nombre Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga USA and Mexico, 2009 In Spanish with English subtitles
I saw the U.S./Mexico coproduction Sin Nombre yesterday and thought it was a decent movie despite a couple of major flaws that continue to grate on me today. I should start by noting that first-time feature film director Fukunaga is to be commended for taking on the themes of Central American immigration to the United States and gang violence of the Mara Salvatrucha variety, two sometimes interrelated topics that have yet to receive much play from other U.S. filmmakers. In traveling scenes like the one pictured below, the director and his team even manage to highlight the desperation along the route to the so-called promised land in a manner reminiscent of both The Grapes of Wrath and Heart of Darkness. Unfortunately, other aspects of the film--like the way it turns into a typical thriller more and more as the main characters head north--are way less impressive on the storytelling end of things. While photogenic leads Paulina Gaitan (Sayra) and Edgar Flores (Willy/El Casper) do nice jobs as a Honduran teenager trying to make her way to family in New Jersey and a Mexican ex-gang member trying to flee from his old way of life, the way the sheltered teenager and the killer with a heart of gold so quickly develop a bond is unconvincing in the extreme: Hollywood, baby, Hollywood. Rating: 3/5 stars.
Killer's Paradise (2006 DVD) Directed by Giselle Portenier Canada and U.K., 2006 In English with Spanish subtitles
I don't know how easy it will be to find this outside of academic circles (my library copy came in an unmarked DVD holder with a homemade, bootleg-looking insert typed out in Spanish), but it's definitely worth tracking down if you get the chance. Apparently first aired on the BBC's This World program a few years back, Killer's Paradise (Spanish title: Paraíso de asesinos) has to do with the ongoing murder spree against women in Guatemala that claimed over two thousand lives in the five years before the movie was made--with an average of two a day in Guatemala City alone (10 times Britain's rate). Although male murder victims outnumbered female victims by a ratio of 8 to 1 at the time of the documentary's shooting, producer/director Portenier and journalist/narrator Olenka Frenkiel point out that the number of women murdered had quadrupled in just the last three years.
While these are grim statistics by anyone's standards, the filmed interviews with family members of the victims reveal the horror of the individual tragedies in a way that statistics alone simply can't. "It's the fashion here to murder women," laments the husband of one victim resigned to the knowledge that his wife's killer will never be caught. "There's no safety in this day and age." In another moment, the brother of a slain college student rails against the police for their blame the victim mentality towards girls and women: "That's how they see the victims. As nobodies. It shouldn't be like that." Fearing reprisals, the single mother of a recently-slain teenager asks a "favor" of the two police who come to make a token investigation of her daughter's death--not to investigate at all "because my other children are still alive, and so am I." Elsewhere, the father of yet another young innocent confronts the bloody clothes his daughter was wearing on the day she was kidnapped and shot and sobs, "Here in Guatemala, there is so much impunity."
Although a reporter's voiceover wearily notes that "gangs, domestic violence, and drug wars are all blamed" for many of the brutal, unsolved murders, Killer's Paradise lays out a convincing case that the root causes of the femicide are more complicated than that. Woefully inefficient police, the unleashing of ex-army "civilians" trained to torture people during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, and a macho culture that permits rapists to avoid punishment if they marry their victims all play a contributing role to the cycle of unpunished violence. To add insult to injury, government officials' response to the killing spree has been one of almost complete indifference: a point shockingly brought home when Guatemala's gutless president Oscar Berger tells journalist Frenkiel that she should be "more optimistic" about the soaring murder rates and the lack of progress in holding anybody responsible for the savage killings. This isn't an easy piece of work to watch--and you might never want to visit Guatemala again after seeing it--but I can't recommend it strongly enough for its courage and its sense of moral outrage. A real eye-opener. (www.nfb.ca/webextension/killersparadise)
Romántico (2007 DVD) Directed by Mark Becker USA, 2005 In Spanish with English subtitles
Superb documentary on Mexican musician Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez and his attempts to eke out a meager living playing for tips in the bars and restaurants of San Francisco's Mission District. Described as "a reverse immigration tale" by director Mark Becker, the film follows the then 57-year old Carmelo from the Bay Area back to Salvatierra, Guanajuato when he decides to return home after a three-year absence to reconnect with his dying mother. The attendant complications, both economic and emotional but often one and the same, are dealt with throughout with an understated touch; however, the manner in which many of the scenes are composed--in particular, one of Carmelo alone at the Zócalo in Mexico City and of another where he learns that visitors' visas to the U.S. are only available to those Mexicans who happen to be very wealthy--is haunting in intensity. Interspersed with wonderful music as uplifting as it melancholy. (http://www.kino.com/)
Sin Nombre
Three of the "nameless"
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