Filmando 'Batalla en el cielo' (2004)

User Rating:

4.9/10   

Director:

Carlos Reygadas

Writers:

Adrian Arce (writer)
Manuel Méndez (writer)

Release Date:

2004 (Mexico)

Genre:

Documentary

Plot Keywords:

Explicit Sex

Awards:

4 wins

Cast

Alex Ezpeleta
Marcos Hernández
Pilles Laurent
Diego Martínez Vignatti
Anapola Mushkadiz
Carlos Reygadas
Bertha Ruiz

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

Mexico

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color

Brave film-making with something to say

I don't disagree that this movie has great flaws. I mean the dialog could be more fluid, the editing could be more crisp, so on so forth.

But while the movie is choppy as a whole, some of the scenes are breathtakingly raw. Like the part where Marcos is driving Ana from the airport, you can see, even almost smell, the city's absurd contrast between its economic classes. When Marcos is just staring into oblivion, you know you're looking at a real person, whose sweat is his own sweat and the grease on his face is his own grease.

There is something mysterious and incomprehensible about the faces of every single person living and struggling in the city. It is not just a face of frustration, anguish, or despair, that a typical actor might give off.

It's a face that is unique to that person, one that you will never get to know probably, but when you take a glance of in the subway or the bus or the sidewalk, you know somehow you relate to them, somehow you know there's a story behind them.

This movie is just a mere glance of one person. It's not quite a study of Marcos, because we never got to be let in that deeply into his past, his motives, his whatever. It's simply presenting his situations and actions as they are, not pushing any particular perspectives the way most films do, not giving us any 'insights,' 'revealing monologues' or any of that.

letting us simply be the judge of him if we are judgmental, the observer if we are observant, the aloof bystander if we are one, and most likely we're a little bit of every one of those types when watching this film.

And that's very commendable for a film to let the viewers ultimately be the camera and the editor of the film. Instead of telling us how to view things.