A scene from Revolucion.
Start the Revolucion without them
By Ed Rampell
The problemo with Revolucion is that its, well, just not very revolutionary.
Prior to the Norte Americano premier at LAFF one of the 10 young Mexican filmmakers said he was given money to make a short film to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. Unfortunately, few if any of the directors have done precisely that in any of the vignettes strung together to make this 105-minute long Gala selection.
The one with the most ties to the 1910 uprising depicts a young woman who inherits a pistol from her grandfather, who rode with Pancho Villa and/or Emiliano Zapata back in the day. Actor Gael Garcia Bernal shot a short about a boy who resists the Catholic church and its obsession with images, and a few of the other brief pics evince some sort of rebellious spirit. In one a grocery store employee takes on her bosses’ antiquated practice of paying with vouchers instead of cash.
In another a fiesta devolves into a raucous riot a la the beggars’ feast in Luis Bunuel’s “Last Supper” sequence in 1961’s Viridiana. Indeed, the shorts stylistically veer from social realism to surrealism, and many do have a Bunuelian sensibility. The vignettes are fine from an artistic point of view and it’s nice to see imagery of Mexico that has nothing to do with drug lords, gangs and undocumented immigrants. But the problem is these shorts have little, if anything, to do with that great upheaval a century ago. Simply put, Revolucion doesn’t live up to its grandiose billing.
In the last short Zapatista type ghostly horsemen with sombreros, rifles and bandoleros ride through L.A.’s Olivera Street. Perhaps to these filmmakers Villa, Zapata, etc., are mere ghosts from the past. I’m no expert on Mexican politics, but it seems to me that this notion seems to be part of the problem. If anything, 21st-century Mexicans need a powerful filmic reminder of their revolutionary heritage, from Zapata to the more recent Comandante Marcos.
As for me, when it comes to Latin American movies and politics, I prefer Sergei Eisenstein’s 1933 Que Viva Mexico! (aka Thunder Over Mexico) and Oliver Stone’s new doc, South of the Border. Because, as the socialist Eugene Debs put it, “Revolution is the boldest word in any language” –- including Spanish.
(Revolucion screens June 23, 5 p.m., Regal Cinemas.)
