The other night my wife, who is studying Spanish history, mentioned the "legend" of Guadalupe. A Siglo de Oro story without Juan Diego's tilda and the mass conversion of Aztec's to Catholic Christianity would be a legend, but I do sympathize with my wife, who is not a believer: there is a massive disinterest in religious history unless that history is generally anti-religious and specifically anti-Christian. So in walks this little film from Spain and Mexico, widely labeled as "science fiction" and "mystery", to try to plug the gap in our cultural education.
The story is a layering of two stories; that of a brother and sister who, abandoned as children, are working this pain out as adults, and that of the simple Juan Diego who had this fantastic encounter with the Virgin of Guadalupe. The modern story brings out many facts about the ancient story and how it is now viewed by the different societies of Mexico. However, this film works on yet another level to describe yet another abandonment: that of Latin America by Spain after the gold ran out. This is not a new observation, I have heard Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa speak of it and have read Carlos Fuentes' discussion of this in his history the "The Buried Mirror".
The film teases out the abandonment theme through the character of Mercedes, who seems like her brother to be preoccupied with pursuing a career, or more correctly, the illusion of a career. The two are the picture of the perfectly modern Spain, hip, single (his marriage is in name only), looking for intellectual amusements and certainly not interested in being encumbered with family (especially children) or inconvenienced by death. They journey to Mexico on a pretext and find themselves moved by simple Mexican piety while trying to work out the nuts and bolts of its source.
There are several lovely scenes in this film. When Mercedes declares to Diego that she is a "foreigner", she neatly underlines the estrangement between Mexico and its parent culture, as does the servant of Aztec descent, Juana (Angelica Aragon) when she retells the history from an Aztec point of view (and steals the show), and in the backbone story of Juan Diego, in particular the performance of José Carlos Ruiz as Juan Diego, with his tender conversations with the Virgin spoken in haunting Nahuatl.
Unfortunately there are also lost opportunities. The scene of Juan trying to sneak pass the Virgin, which alone could have been worth the price of admission, is rushed. More fun would have been had if they had worked for the character Karim and he had been a skeptical producer of science documentaries.
"Guadalupe" lacks the modernist cinema's reliance on murder, adultery and ghosts that might win a movie such as "Volver" "artistic" awards, but Guadalupe is a little engine that tries. The Guadalupen story that emerges is not so much that of spiritual journeys (these are not real conversions), but that of how a syncretic culture was born of an image of a virgin who was not Spanish and not Aztec, but both, and hints this culture may triumph over its pure bred parents. For this reason, this could be a picture for (religious) skeptics. However, in speaking with many voices, the film falls short. Some (unintended?) inside-humor illustrates this. If you follow Diego's wooing of Mercedes, he is most expansive and open in his earliest attempts, which she rejects. When she meets his many siblings, things do not get better (and we are giggling, "¿Está esto al hacienda?"). Diego pulls back and later says, "... and we can have two children" and finally seems to turn the corner with Mercedes.
In the end, the Virgin of Guadalupe remains a symbol about which the producers fold a film.
The story is a layering of two stories; that of a brother and sister who, abandoned as children, are working this pain out as adults, and that of the simple Juan Diego who had this fantastic encounter with the Virgin of Guadalupe. The modern story brings out many facts about the ancient story and how it is now viewed by the different societies of Mexico. However, this film works on yet another level to describe yet another abandonment: that of Latin America by Spain after the gold ran out. This is not a new observation, I have heard Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa speak of it and have read Carlos Fuentes' discussion of this in his history the "The Buried Mirror".
The film teases out the abandonment theme through the character of Mercedes, who seems like her brother to be preoccupied with pursuing a career, or more correctly, the illusion of a career. The two are the picture of the perfectly modern Spain, hip, single (his marriage is in name only), looking for intellectual amusements and certainly not interested in being encumbered with family (especially children) or inconvenienced by death. They journey to Mexico on a pretext and find themselves moved by simple Mexican piety while trying to work out the nuts and bolts of its source.
There are several lovely scenes in this film. When Mercedes declares to Diego that she is a "foreigner", she neatly underlines the estrangement between Mexico and its parent culture, as does the servant of Aztec descent, Juana (Angelica Aragon) when she retells the history from an Aztec point of view (and steals the show), and in the backbone story of Juan Diego, in particular the performance of José Carlos Ruiz as Juan Diego, with his tender conversations with the Virgin spoken in haunting Nahuatl.
Unfortunately there are also lost opportunities. The scene of Juan trying to sneak pass the Virgin, which alone could have been worth the price of admission, is rushed. More fun would have been had if they had worked for the character Karim and he had been a skeptical producer of science documentaries.
"Guadalupe" lacks the modernist cinema's reliance on murder, adultery and ghosts that might win a movie such as "Volver" "artistic" awards, but Guadalupe is a little engine that tries. The Guadalupen story that emerges is not so much that of spiritual journeys (these are not real conversions), but that of how a syncretic culture was born of an image of a virgin who was not Spanish and not Aztec, but both, and hints this culture may triumph over its pure bred parents. For this reason, this could be a picture for (religious) skeptics. However, in speaking with many voices, the film falls short. Some (unintended?) inside-humor illustrates this. If you follow Diego's wooing of Mercedes, he is most expansive and open in his earliest attempts, which she rejects. When she meets his many siblings, things do not get better (and we are giggling, "¿Está esto al hacienda?"). Diego pulls back and later says, "... and we can have two children" and finally seems to turn the corner with Mercedes.
In the end, the Virgin of Guadalupe remains a symbol about which the producers fold a film.
