I still don't understand why Criterion doesn't restore and subtitle these types of cinematic artifacts instead of Gullermo del Toro? Tarantino? Gosh!! This work is of unusual fascination because it manages to hook you into the impregnable wild ecology of the site, making you complicit in the atavistic quarrels between clans and, from the beginning, with the ancestral prayers for the deceased we feel something extreme, almost extinct; The mixture of stylistic resources is almost rudimentary, it undoubtedly makes this trip to the past of a story, not necessarily so old - without it being the present - peculiar; Compare frames such as the one of the caravan that descends walking with the bridle of its horses in hand, due to the steep slope, after kidnapping the widower Kist who was chopping wood, and carrying him tied up while we listen to the mountain stream and perceive the houses embedded in the serpentine hill. The old people were the first to curse Mgelika "our grandparents never did what you are doing"; and in fact not even the father managed to convince the rabid Mgelika who only repeated "an eye for an eye, do you want me to turn the other cheek again for the second and third time?" . Free him before the snow falls and they can't pay the ransom anyway because the mountain roads will be closed. No and no and no. Nothing defeated Mgelika's obstinacy and resentment. In fact, when he threw the key and the kidnapped Kist refused to escape, when the drunk neighbor sang to him, the Kist again refused to escape and made a sign with his hands that he would wait because they would pay the ransom. In a moment of blind rage, Mgelika stands up, takes the rifle and shoots the prisoner, killing him on the spot with his shackle still on. I will never forget how the end made me feel, while the angry Mgelika, or repentant, we will never know, drags the dead prisoner up the hill and the neighbors of the village follow him, opposing him taking the prisoner to a unfaithful, uphill to their Christian cemetery. And right in the snowy chasm, they run into the relatives of the kidnapped Kist, a woman and some children carrying a huge cow linked to pay the ransom. For seconds, the film explodes in silence and the sound of the mountain is heard and everyone's faces are seen. Mgelika collapses and runs a few meters away to make a sepukku with her butcher's knife.
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