James Cameron's Avatar has been praised for taking us to another world. A place that we are utterly unfamiliar with but can revel in its beauty. Avatar is not the only film this year to take me to a unique world I know nothing about, but so has Cary Fukunaga's beautiful Sin Nombre (2009). I am now glad to have waited to put up my best of the year list until I saw Sin Nombre because I have a lot to say about it, and it certainly deserves a spot on that list.
Lets start with the direction. Fukunaga is now officially on my top five directors of the year list, right in front of the Coen brothers. That means with all his millions of dollars I am kicking James Cameron off that list. I don't know how he is able to do it, but Fukunaga places his crew and camera in the middle of this culture. You are immersed in these people's lives as they try to escape South America and make their way north to America. I know he couldn't have gotten permission from everyone involved in this movie, they were not extras, he must have just shot and shot and the result is an immersive feeling that all the CGI in the world couldn't recreate.
The story surrounds Willy or El Casper as his gang calls him as he tries to balance his life between his girlfriend and the ruthless gang he is in. You can read on his face that this is not the life he has chosen, but he is strong enough to be apart of it, but smart enough to know its not for him. Eventually the two worlds collide in violence and he makes a decision that ultimately seals his fate, but at the same time releases him from the psychological prison that is being in the gang. Willy is played by newcomer Edgar Flores, who is nothing short of spectacular here. As an audience member you just like watching him, your drawn to his silence, his rage is always below the surface, if he was white and lived in the 50's we would be talking about him on the level of Dean or Brando. He commands the screen with such ease, and I hope people take note of this and put him in other films. The problem with him is I don't know if he has much more range or a broad enough appeal and sadly this may be the only thing we see of Edgar Flores.
Willy has a young friend Smiley who wants to be in the gang. Willy doesn't encourage it, or dissuade him. Smiley being all of 13 or 14 has to commit a murder of the rival gang as initiation. The film deals with this in passing, as if it is just another day, which makes it all that more haunting. Eventually Willy becomes the target of his own gang and it is Smiley who is sent after him. It is the plot of a great noir thriller but set on the rails of Mexico. Structurally the film stays away from the super realistic storytelling of other films of this yoke and instead doesn't forget that this is a movie, and tries to both entertain and inform.
While Willy is going threw his ordeal he meets up with a young lady named Sayra played by Paulina Gaitan who is heading north to meet up with family in New Jersey. Those two's fates become intertwined and that sets off our inevitable conclusion. Unfortunately this is the one misstep this movie takes as I never believed that Sayra and Willy's motivation to be together was ever that clear or believable, and unfortunately it does hurt the films climax. Had that worked better, Sin Nombre may have been my favorite film of the year.
One more huge note to be mentioned is the Cinematography, which is hands down the best of the year. And I am not talking about mistaking beautiful landscapes for great cinematography, but somehow Adriano Goldman was able to get his 35 MM camera in such tight and unusual spaces and with what seemed like just natural light create great contrast and lighting. Some of the stuff on the train should be a class in using natural light.
I can see comparisons to the more popular film City of God, and if you are a fan of that film check out Sin Nombre which in my opinion is a better movie. Sin Nombre combines a landscape not usually seen, with stories not usually told, and near perfect structure and acting that will leave you contemplating it for days. I am very excited to see what Fukunaga will come up with next. Until then, I hope to see Sin Nombre a second time.
****1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment