The City of Your Final Destination

James Ivory’s The City is Our Final Destination (2009) is a drama that recounts the adventures of Omar, a PhD student in Literature who travels to Uruguay to convince the family of the deceased novelist, Jules Gund, to grant him permission to write his biography. Ocho Rios is a huge farmhouse owned by the Gund family and the place where Omar will reconstruct his own identity while unveiling the history and the secrets of his favourite author’s family. Based on the novel with the same name by the American writer Peter Cameron, Ivory takes us to a place that evinces a dichotomous reality about the Latin America of the past, and the Latin America of the present, both envisioning a better future. This magical destination is the meeting place for those trying to flee from their sad unwanted realities, but it is also a place some want to escape from. This is a movie about who we are, who we pretend to be, and who we wish to become.

Wanting to please his girlfriend, Omar travels to Uruguay seeking the authorization to write Jules Gund's biography. In Uruguay (though the film is shot in Argentina), Omar arrives at the Ocho Rios ranch which had been the writer's home, and also the spectacular setting for many of his works. The house is large, elegant, and full of old artifacts that reflect its origin, and the origin of what was once a rich European migrant family getting to enjoy the wonders of the New Continent in Uruguay. Although Omar finds a dream place according to Gund's books, he will soon discover that his knowledge about the author is nothing compared to the complexity brought by the family and the secret behind his suicide (which took place in the same house).

Ivory leads us to understand the many reasons why the characters in the film have come to Uruguay, which is also part of the history of the region and the reason for filming there. Thus we are presented with images from the beginning of the twentieth century before and after the Second World War. Boatloads of rich Europeans arrived in South America to rebuild lives that the political and economic crises of their countries had destroyed. “They lived in the past, their past, they did not want to know anything about the present, any present, anywhere. South America is good for that if you reach far enough” Adam (Jules’s older brother) comments while showing Omar pictures of his parents on their way to Uruguay.

Latin America becomes a place to reinvent yourself. As the movie's title says, it is the city of final destination. Throughout the twentieth century, people travelled to Latin America because of their nostalgia for the old good days in Europe. Adam, for example, so in Latin America an opportunity to openly experience his homosexuality with his partner. Arden (Jules’ mistress) had arrived in Latin America as a gypsy looking for an adventure. Omar found in Uruguay his real self, and his real romantic love. Romance itself is a characteristic of Latin America and its people. “People here like imagining men and women together,” says Arden about the comments people make about here and Omar.

But on the other hand, there are those that want an escape from the present offered by Latin America, a present that seems to be stuck in the past, with no technology, no places of entertainment other than talking about the lives of the neighbours. For those people, adventure, romance, and renouncing to what modernity has to offer could be something beautiful, but wild and extremely boring. In the movie, those who have their feet on earth (and the necessary amount of money) will rather live in a city like New York like Caroline (Jules’ widow) and Deirdre (Omar’s girlfriend) decide by the end of the movie.

The versatility provided by a place like Latin America is the ideal scenario for the plot represented by Ivory: it is beauty, it is wilderness, it is love, it is past, it is present, and it offers a future at the same time. Perhaps, in literature, it is easier to create a fantastic, romantic place. But as Ivory comments, when they read the novel, they undoubtedly knew that it should be filmed in Uruguay or some similar place like Argentina, that it could not be faked in a studio. What Latin America provides to the process of filmmaking was in this case irreplaceable. In the plot (as in the filmmaking process) Latin America is a beautiful place, but it is stuck in the past, and places like New York or European cities are the symbol of modernity, culturally and technologically.

Selena

The biopic Selena (1997) begins with an excited Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (played by Jennifer Lopez) surrounded by supportive family and friends and getting prepared to sing in the Houston Astrodome, February 26, 1995, to what reporters say is the arena’s largest crowd ever. But how did she get here? What’s the story behind Selena’s rise to fame? And so the movie gives a flashback to Corpus Christi, Texas, 1961, with Selena’s father, Abraham (Edward James Olmos), singing 50s love songs in a Mexican barbershop trio.

This talented trio is called The Dinos, and they are continually turned down by owners of white clubs because they are Mexican, and also refused by Mexican clubs because the group only knows "gringo music." Caught between two competing worlds, Abraham is haunted by memories of rejection until 1981, in Lake Jackson, Texas, when his nine-year-old daughter Selena takes an interest in her father’s hobby of singing his old tunes. Her interest sparks an idea in Abraham to start a family band, although "family" means only his son and two daughters, not himself. He forces the children to practice the music and even opens up a Mexican restaurant (for all those gringos that like Mexican food) so that he can showcase "Selena y Los Dinos" playing songs like “Blue Moon” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” His wife fears that he is becoming obsessed with music again and living vicariously through his children, but Abraham insists that Selena has the talent to make it big and he continues to get publicity for the children, even after the restaurant goes broke due to "Reaganomics" and they have to leave their home. The children become depressed when they realize that their music isn’t as big a hit in the county fairs as it was in the restaurant because the Tejano audience enjoys only male performers. Then one day, in hopes of cheering up Selena, her mother teaches her the Cumbia dance moves of "the washing machine," which Selena uses to liven up the act. From here a star is born.

The film jumps to 1989 in El Paso, Texas, with the family band playing to huge crowds at the county fair and Selena slowly becoming a sensation. Her fame is shown in many amusing situations, such as when the tour bus becomes stuck off the side of the road and two very tough-looking Mexicans with tattoos and goatees almost trip over each other at the chance of helping "Selenas." Her father continues to push for the big time, and although Selena is just as driven as he is, she still finds herself yearning for a normal life, one which offers someone whom she can love. Enter Chris Pérez (Jon Seda), a wild, rebel guitarist with long hair and ripped jeans, brought into the band despite Abraham’s complaints. After the family cleans up Chris's image, sparks begin to fly between him and Selena. On their tour of California, Chris lets his punk friends trash his hotel room and as a result is almost fired by the enraged Abraham. Chris declares to Selena that acts like a punk because she’s too good for him, and she responds that he is simply trying to keep up an image that isn’t him. After this encounter, their love blooms though Abraham becomes suspicious of their romance. The band members also become apprehensive of what this will do to the performances, but everything appears to be going well with their new number one song and a promising tour in Mexico.

Abraham is hesitant to let his daughter perform in Mexico because although her songs are all in Spanish, it is not her native language. Still scarred from his own experiences as a singer, he exclaims that the Mexicans don’t accept Mexican-Americans; in fact, stuck in cultural limbo they constantly have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans and more American than the Americans! But Selena is persistent and shows her star quality when she charms the Mexican press which leads to an incredibly successful Mexican tour. Yet, despite all this good exposure, Abraham still can not tolerate Selena dating Chris and so he fires him, causing the two to take their relationship into hiding. Finally Selena is fed up with the situation and she and Chris marry without her father’s consent. Abraham is at first enraged, but then, when Selena returns home with her new husband, her father realizes that he had pushed her to do it and he is proud that she made the decision on her own. Selena’s family then welcomes Chris with open arms.

After this, success can not seem to stay away from the 20-year-old Selena. She opens clothing boutiques with her own designs, wins a Grammy, and starts to record an English cross-over album. She and Chris even talk about having kids. But Abraham comes to Selena with suspicions that her business and fan club manager, Yolanda Saldavar, has been swindling money and writing odd cheques. Selena is incredulous until they confront Yolanda and her pleas of innocence seem doubtful; yet they still allow Yolanda to work for them as long as she accounts for all the finances. This brings the film back to its beginning with the 1995 performance at the Houston Astrodome, Selena’s shining moment as a cross-over artist. Suddenly, we are confronted with images from a newscast and the reporter stating that the beloved singer Selena has been shot by her employee Yolanda Saldavar after they had met to go over some finances. The finale of the biopic of this admired human being flashes scenes of her family receiving the news of her death in the hospital, a solitary microphone in an empty arena, and thousands of fans, with pictures of the real Selena, holding a candlelight vigil for the untimely death of a star in her prime.

Selena contains compelling plot similarities to La Bamba, another biopic of a Mexican-American star cut down in his prime. Yet these two singers accepted their cultural backgrounds in a different ways, with Ritchie trying to be more white while Selena embraced her Mexican roots (although they were foreign to her) and attempted to cross over to English recordings from there. Her father, who was plagued with ambivalence about his own dual identity, made sure that Selena was able to sing in Spanish from a young age, even teaching her to trill a Spanish ‘r’ at age eight. He insists that as Mexican-Americans they need to speak English perfectly for the whites and they need to speak Spanish perfectly for the Mexicans, and therefore they “gotta be twice as perfect as everybody else!” The film displays the sentiment that in the 1950s, crossing over was simply not possible for either Abraham or Ritchie Valens, but that by the 1990s Selena could prove that such opinions had been changed. Not only did she achieve a cultural cross-over, but she became the top Mexican-American performer of her time, male or female, and ultimately was accepted on both sides of the border for who she was.

La Bamba

La Bamba (1987) tells the life story of 1950s rock-and-roll phenom, Ritchie Valens, from his underprivileged beginnings to his tragic end. The movie begins with Richie (Lou Diamond Phillips), born Ricardo Valenzuela, and his mother, Connie (Rosana DeSoto) working as fruit pickers in an orange grove in Paicoma, California. Their pay depends on their labour, but everyone in the camp works hard hours and enjoys the family-like atmosphere of Mexican tradition. One day, out of the blue, a motorcycle roars into the camp carrying tough guy Bob Valenzuela (Esai Morales), Richie’s older brother. The two embrace in a brotherly hug and then excitedly find their mother and Rosie, Richie’s love interest. Bob has just gotten out of jail and is eager to bring his family back to a city in southern California; but his mother refuses as she is suspicious that the money that he shows her has been cultivated in dishonest ways. Finally she is convinced, and they leave the next day, but not before Bob, with no concern for Richie’s feelings, takes Rosie’s virginity and brings her with them on his motorcycle. The family moves into a run-down shack while Rosie and Bob reside in the RV beside it. Bob continues his lifestyle of drinking and drugs, while Richie proves to be a clean-cut 16-year-old: going to school and staying out of trouble. The distance between the two brothers widens when Rosie announces she’s pregnant (with a baby that Bob does not care to have), whereas Ritchie joins the rock-and-roll band “The Silhouettes” and starts dating a blonde girl from high school named Donna.

After a few low-key garage gigs, Connie pumps up the band’s exposure and gets them a show at the local Legion Hall. When the lead singer becomes upset about Connie getting gigs for them, the rest of the band sides with Richie and allows him to sing an amazing set at the Legion. Later on that same night, Bob turns up drunk at the show and causes a huge brawl which ruins the evening. Connie yells at him, but Bob shows no remorse as he bellows that the world doesn’t revolve around Richie (albeit Richie joined in on the brawl to protect his drunk brother). However, all is not lost as a music scout named Bob Keene (Joe Pantoliano) had been among the young people in the crowded legion hall and he immediately signs Richie to his modest record label, Del-Fi Records. His rise to fame progresses quickly after that as the new ‘Ritchie Valens’ becomes a household name; but such fame brings a price to his personal life as his relationship with Donna slowly deteriorates on account of her father’s racism. During this time he also divulges that he has dreams of the memory of two planes crashing, falling to the earth, and killing his best friend, which has caused Richie’s fear of flying.

Recording the songs just as Keene envisions them proves to warrant much time and effort, but Richie is whole-heartedly committed to the cause of his music. Then, when brother Bob sees that Richie has written the song ‘For Donna’ in hopes of winning her over again, he takes action by forcing his reluctant brother across the border to Tijuana to get drunk and lose his virginity. Although Richie is distracted by the band onstage playing the folk song “La Bamba”, he still wakes up the next morning in an old Mexican man’s shack, with a hangover, a tattoo, and a talisman to protect him from his dreams of flying; but his virginity is still intact. Not long after, Keen gets Richie to agree to fly to New York in order to be on the popular teenage live-music show “American Bandstand”. This gig sends Richie straight to stardom and allows him to buy his mom the house he’s always wanted to give her, not to mention a flashy new car for himself which helps him to persuade Donna to come back to him. Again, at the sight of Richie’s fame, Bob flounders into drunkenness and Rosie does not even permit him to see his own daughter. Richie then asks Keene if he can try a rock-and-roll version of “La Bamba”. Keene is hesitant at first, but the new version becomes an instant success. Richie returns home from touring to a house full of smiling family and friends, except for Bob who still can’t take his brother’s fame. When Bob and Richie are alone together they begin yelling their true feelings at one another and Bob reveals that he never got over that fact that his father left when he was born and Richie’s father, Steve, was always the father that he had wanted but could never truly belong to. A fist fight ensues, and Bob yells, “I’m gonna kill you!” before accidentally ripping the talisman from Richie’s neck. The two stop and feel the gravity of what has been done. Richie is shaken by the experience, but still leaves his family and loving girlfriend behind to do a tour with several other big name rock-and-roll artists. When their tour bus breaks down and they instead have to fly to Fargo, Richie is hesitant but he is encouraged by the support of his friends as they all fly off into the snowy night.

The plane crashes and kills all the passengers. Ricardo Valenzuela: the affectionate son, the devoted boyfriend, and the phenomenal performer, was only seventeen years old when he died. His family and friends hear the news at the same time as the rest of the country on a national news radio bulletin: Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, and JB Richardson: all dead due to a tragic plane crash. The film’s heartbreaking ending leaves the audience with visions of those who were closest to Richie in absolute despair over the absence of this light in their life, their star of fame. Then, during the credits, the video of Richie performing La Bamba reminds us that through his beloved music he will live forever.

La Bamba is apparently a biography of Ritchie Valens’ life, but it could be argued that it is as much about his older brother Bob as it is about the star himself. The stark contrasts between the brothers can be seen in more than just their lifestyles, as Bob has held on to his Mexican roots and Richie hasn’t even really been introduced to them. Bob takes Richie to Tijuana and Richie is overwhelmed by the revelry and promiscuity at every turn. While Bob is able to chat-up the different prostitutes around the room, Richie can barely speak, let alone in Spanish. This lack of native culture is especially evident when he is confronted the next morning by the old Mexican man, to whom he says, “Yo no speako español.” What's more, when Richie continues to alter his lyrics while recording, Keen tries to be understanding, saying that he realizes Mexico has a tradition of changing song lyrics but this isn’t Mexico, when Richie interrupts him by saying, “Look man, I haven’t even been to Mexico. My music is my music.” The rich Latin American culture in the film is constantly mixed with the American purpose and resolve to attain that elusive American dream. But Ritchie Valens actually did make it to the top and wrote three #1 hits in his short recording career of eight months; even through an unsettling experience of having his name changed from Richie Valenzuela to Ritchie Valens in order to decrease his Mexican appearance. This is a Latinized, rags-to-riches, American story which analyzes Richie’s sense of self, asserting that although someone may be of Mexican heritage, his background certainly doesn’t dictate his identity, especially when the American dream is at stake.

Next Stop Wonderland

The plot of the 1998 film Next Stop Wonderland revolves around the concept of destiny and whether or not the protagonist, Erin (Hope Davis), will overcome her solitude and realize that fate is on her side. The movie begins in Boston with Erin, a middle-aged nurse, walking home to find her boyfriend Sean (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a fervent activist, moving out. Erin is devastated by this and becomes even more introverted than she already is. Her mother, not realizing that Erin is actually content in her time alone, sets up a personal ad in the newspaper for her daughter in hopes that she will begin to date again and enjoy herself. Erin begins to glimpse a man every so often who takes the same commuter train as her (the train which coincidentally ends the line at ‘Wonderland’, the greyhound racetrack). This mystery man is Alan (Alan Gelfant) and his story runs parallel to Erin’s, but no matter how much the two seem destined for each other, their stories never seem to meet.

Alan volunteers at the city aquarium while studying to be a marine biologist; however, it soon becomes clear that Alan’s family is one of little means and that he owes his education to a loan shark named Frank who has been feeding Alan’s father’s gambling addiction for many years. Alan loathes being in debt to such a character, especially when Frank asks him to kill the aquarium’s prize balloonfish, Puff, as a favor to some of Frank’s powerful friends who had lost a land deal to the aquarium. As Alan struggles with his morals on what he should do, his best friends decide to make a bet to choose a personal ad and see who can make-out with the girl first. Alan is disgusted with their game and doesn’t participate; a fortunate coincidence seeing as the friends choose Erin’s ad and she then cleverly calls them out on their petty scheme when she discovers what they had been plotting. Meanwhile, Alan eventually gives in to Frank’s wishes and steals Puff away, but makes it look as though the piranhas ate the prize fish. Frank is elated and erases Alan’s debt, thinking that Alan would be happy to continue doing such jobs for him, but this is far from the truth.

Back in Erin’s story, just when she hits despair on account of all the lousy suitors she’s encountered, she meets a charming, Brazilian man named Andre (José Zúñiga) who is in the hospital to finish his recovery from a bout of malaria. Despite Erin’s best attempts to dissuade his romantic efforts, she finds that she is strangely attracted to him, if only because her deceased father used to vacation with her in Brazil and the fond memories seem to draw her to this Brazilian. Andre invites her to return with him to Sao Paolo, and although she feels as though she would be running away from her troubled life in Boston, she agrees. When she returns home that same day to find Sean asking her forgiveness, she exerts the fortitude which she’s learnt over the course of her blind dates and turns her back on him. Meanwhile, Alan shows his own independence from Frank as he returns Puff to the tank unharmed. He then boards the ‘Wonderland’ commuter train to head home. Here is where fate takes action and sends Erin into a traffic jam while on her way to the airport. Seeing no other alternative, she decides to catch the ‘Wonderland’ train in order to reach her plane on time. While on the train she becomes overwhelmed by the amount of people squishing against her and when she tries to leave the train she bumps into Alan and simply lays her head down in exhaustion on his shoulder. They both smile at each other when they realize that they have glimpsed one another in and around the city, but have never met. At this moment, Cupid’s arrow makes an almost audible twang in its release. Alan and Erin walk by the sea and as their sentiments and thoughts exactly mirror those of the other, they both realize that they are headed for the next stop: Happiness.

There are subtle hints of South America which are dispersed throughout Next Stop Wonderland, such as Erin’s half-hidden record album entitled “After Hours South America”, or one of her suitors who claims to be an avid collector of South American art and travels often to Brazil; yet they all depict the continent as being a tranquil and loving place in stark contrast to the busy, dreary life of Boston. Apart from Andre being the only South American character, he is also a musicologist who was collecting ethnic folk songs in Bolivia when he contracted the malaria. As sappy as it may be that he sings love songs softly in Portuguese to the women he is seducing, he’s is also the first man in the movie to see Erin for who she is. He says that she must have some of Brazil in her because she is sad and happy at the same time; she doesn’t smile but she seems content. While it’s never explained as to why Brazil would also be seen in this light, the plot does tend to showcase Brazil as a place of fond memories and new beginnings. Is Erin running away to Brazil or is she trying to run towards a new life? When she finally meets Alan, a new question arises: Which is her true ‘Wonderland’: Brazil or Boston? Although she has declared to Andre that she will return to Brazil someday, fate finally shows her that happiness doesn’t have to be found in a country which embodies pleasant memories; it can also be found right in front of you.

Blow

"Either one of you guys speak Spanish?" asks Johnny Depp's character, George Jung, near the beginning of Ted Demme's Blow. He and his friends have started up a smallscale drug-dealing operation, and they realize it's time to step up a gear, and so also go to the source. Which is necessarily to go to Latin America. So the next scene sees them South of the Border, in Puerto Vallarta, asking around all the bars and shops: "¿A cómo el marijuana?" "¿Dónde está pot?" "¿El weed?" To deal drugs efficiently and effectively, you have to become at least a little bit Latin.

And such is Jung's trajectory: at first his language skills are abysmal, and he is clearly a fish out of water when trying to negotiate with the locals. But drug runners soon learn how to blend in: how else do they make their way past customs and airport security barriers? A stand-out sequence shows Jung walking through a baggage hall in what is almost a trance, trying to keep calm by fixing his mind on other things: "a fun party, a moment of triumph, a sexual encounter." But there's always some revealing detail that indicates that the mule is not any other ordinary passenger; here, the fact that Jung has gone down to Colombia just for the day, and that his hollow-bottomed suitcase contains a random assortment of clothes, including a pair of women's underwear.

As Jung climbs the narcotraffic hierarchy, his Spanish improves and he even takes on a Latina wife. He becomes increasingly estranged from his all-American Massachusetts upbringing, and not merely because of the massive amounts of cash that he suddenly has to spend. This is a story about the distance that opens up between parents and children: the breach that separates George from his mother and father has much to do with his social and geographic mobility. (Ironically, by contrast he subsequently loses touch with his own daughter thanks to his own later immobility, as federal inmate number 19225004 doing time as a consequence of his border-breaching career.) At the same time, he also becomes increasingly flamboyant. What's the point of pulling in millions of ill-gotten dollars if you don't get a bigger house, a new car, loud clothes? This is the paradox of the drug trade: it's about both blending in and standing out.

The drug trade is in some ways capitalism at its purest: flows of an eminently disposable commodity criss-cross with tidal waves of cash, in both directions in defiance of any attempts at bureaucratic regulation or taxation. Indeed, the film opens with a depiction of the near-seamless chain of production, distribution, and consumption from coca harvest in Colombia to trans-Caribbean plane flight to guys doing a line in Miami. Latin America has the comparative advantage of millennia cultivating the raw product; North America has an almost limitless market for the finished goods. The laws of supply and demand dictate that nothing will get in the way of the transnational trade.


But the film also portrays the cultural effects of these hemispheric exchanges. Jung claims essentially to have introduced the cocaine habit to the United States, implanting it first in California among the Hollywood set, from which it then spread irresistibly Eastwards. "It exploded on the American culture like an atomic bomb," we're told. The movie neglects to show the victims of this bomb. Indeed, practically the only victim is George himself, it seems, a smart businessman and loving father who is caught only with his final delivery, whose profits are destined to giving his child a better life. But it emphasizes the massive cultural changes that affect the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s, transformations irredeemably connected to the fact that the country is awash with Latin stimulants and narcotics.

In the course of the United States' drug-driven metamorphosis, this movie suggests, it also becomes more cosmopolitan and more colourful, if not necessarily any happier. Blow ends with an image of painful nostalgia, of Jung the prisoner imagining that his now grown-up daughter might visit him in prison. But she doesn't and she won't. With the war on drugs, new enclosures have sprung up as the USA becomes the one of the world's most incarcerated societies. But again, the emphasis is on the barriers between generations: national cultural differences disappear, Americans become Latin which Latins are infused with the American spirit of pioneer capitalism, but implicitly the price to be paid is an unbridgeable chasm between past and present, old and young.

YouTube Link: movie trailer.

End of the Spear

When I was little I had a number of Spire Christian comics. I remember several of them, true-life stories of suffering or heroism in the face of great danger and classics of evangelical inspiration: God's Smuggler was perhaps my favorite, an account of "Brother Andrew"'s exploits taking bibles across the Iron Curtain; The Hiding Place described Corrie Ten Boom's activities hiding European Jews during the Holocaust; The Cross and the Switchblade, about David Wilkerson's experiences on the streets of New York; In the Presence of Mine Enemies depicted Howard Rutledge's experience as prisoner of war in Vietnam's "Hanoi Hilton." Each was vivid and exciting; I read them over and over. Evangelical Christianity confronted Communism, Nazism, and even contemporary Capitalism, and in each case performed miracles by changing stubborn hearts and minds.

And then there was Through Gates of Splendor. This tale was much more traditional, and if it weren't for the key role played by a little yellow aeroplane, it could have come straight out of the nineteenth century. For this was sacrifice and redemption at the colonial frontier: a hitherto uncontacted tribe, renowned for its savagery, massacres a group of protestant missionaries; in time, however, and with the perseverance of the murdered men's relatives who continue in the field, the killers are both forgiven and saved.

The aptly named Nate Saint and his companions become martyrs, witnesses whose deaths are no longer in vain. And the Waodani tribe, deep in Amazonian Ecuador, are effectively desubalternized.

End of the Spear tells this story with verve and remarkable technical facility. The jungle cinematography is luscious and accomplished, especially the numerous aerial shots during the first half hour, dedicated to following Saint's role as missionary pilot. The film also shows awareness that a simple conversion narrative is no longer sufficient justification for such disruption of native cultures, so it presents the motivation for Western incursion in terms of reducing Waodani self-harm. Violence internal to the group, we are told, was so endemic that "more than half of all the Waodani died from the spears of other Waodani." In a reverse of, well, of the entire history of colonial contact in the Americas, here the indigenous face extinction precisely because they have not so far been subjected to Western hegemony. The state of nature they live in is unsustainable. And so they have to be persuaded to put their old ways behind them by means of an act of cultural translation, whereby Christian doctrine is posed in the language of native mythology: "Waengongi doesn't want anyone to kill. . . . Waengongi marked his trail with carvings. . . . Waengongi has a Son: He was speared but he didn't apear back. " This is transculturation at work.

Indeed, in a neat coda that runs the risk of being patronizing but just falls short, we see clips from the same director's documentary feature, Beyond the Gates of Splendor, in which Saint's son recounts the estrangement of Western practices (drive-throughs, moving walkways, supermarkets, credit cards) as seen through the eyes of a Waodani tribesman.

So what remains intact and untouched by the film's fascination with transculturation is not then so much the West per se, but its vision of the 1950s. This is the brief moment before contact in which refreshment came from hand-made cordials in glass bottles, in which healthy young men could dance chastely with their wives and girlfriends somewhere in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, in which fathers lovingly crafted toy aeroplanes for their adoring sons. Far then from the notion of a mutual redemption, in which the Waodani learn from the indefatigable missionaries who in turn gain a new family and community among the now civilized savages, the film is laced with a profound nostalgia for the brief years between wartime hardship and contemporary overabundance.

To put this another way, and in the terms of the movie's opening line, there's a certain wistfulness for a time when the world really did seem to be one of "irreconcilable differences." For all the desubalternization and the dream of hegemonization, neither are really shown or developed in great detail. The story's drama depends upon a fundamental clash between the West and its other, not upon the homogenization that reduces the other to mere subordinate (however comically critical) of Western excesses. No wonder the camera lingers so lovingly on forest, native, and missionary alike in this brief moment of bliss that can be sustained only during the first reel. There's an awareness that hegemony doesn't fill a lack; it creates one.


YouTube Link: movie trailer. (NB there is lots of footage on YouTube about this movie, including much information about how it was made.)

Carry On Columbus

So was Carry on Columbus Britain's contribution to the cinematic celebrations of 1992's five-hundred year anniversary of Columbus's first voyage? If so, it's a pretty pathetic offering.

The "Carry On" films were never really very funny, certainly not compared to, say, the Ealing Comedies. But they were of their time and illustrated a certain English low-brow kitsch of the 1950s and 1960s. They were the cinematic equivalent of naughty postcards bought in rundown seaside resorts. But that age was well and truly over by the time the series limped to a halt after almost thirty titles, with what are universally agreed to be the dampest of squibs in Carry on England (1976) and Carry on Emannuelle (1978).

The "Comic Strip" gang of alternative comedians that burst on to the scene in the 1980s seemed funny at first. But the novelty soon faded; and in any case, were Alexei Sayle or Rik Mayall (say) actually ever all that amusing?

In any case, Carry on Columbus is fruit of a misguided attempt to update the "Carry On" formula by breathing into it the fresh spirit of the Comic Strip. Unfortunately, what results is a pale imitation of the original, too respectful by half and too happy to rely on the lamest of double entendres and the shallowest of verbal jesting. Any film in which a line such as "Did you give it to her?" is meant to be amusing deserves to fail, and to fail badly. Had the film been a parody of the "Carry On" spirit, rather than its attempted reincarnation, and perhaps therefore traded more on the critical detachment that Julian Clary (the one half-bright spark here) gives to his role, that the film might have been rescued. But alas, no.

The strange thing also is that the alternative comedy movement of the 1980s gained fame initially for its dismantling of existing shibboleths, its political verve, and its cavalier disrespect for much beloved English cultural sensibilities. "Five Go Mad in Dorset", for instance, skewered Enid Blyton almost perfectly, catching the mood of a disenchanted country in the early 1980s, secure only when examining its own insecurities. One would have thought that the history of European imperialism might have merited similar treatment, simultaneously cavalier and thoughtful. But again, alas, no. The weak jokes about the Spanish Inquisition, for instance, are simply a leaf taken out of Sellars and Yeatman's philosophy that "history is all you can remember," without any of the potential political analysis of power, repression, and xenophobia that could have enabled some connection to the present, as exhibited by the best moments of, say, "Blackadder Goes Forth".

Perhaps the one imaginative aspect of this film is the portrayal of American Indians as street-smart wisecrackers who remark to themselves in broad New York accents about how primitive are the gold-grubbing Europeans who have landed on their shores. But this comes only after an hour of tired costume drama that revels only in cleavage and homophobia. Moreover, the portrayal is inconsistent, as the indigenous have to be kitted out with an obligatory shaman, as well as propositions to bed the visiting countess. They do have the last laugh, as they send Columbus and crew packing with what is literally fool's gold. But as with the rest of the film, it's not really much of a laugh in the end.

This movie is all about the decline of (one strand at least of) English mass culture, its descent into toothlessly inadvertent self-parody, lacking any other pretensions, political, cinematic, or even humorous. It's a misfiring piece of nostalgia for an England that should have been safely consigned to the past.

The Whippet Inn claims that this film did better at the box office than either Christopher Columbus: The Discovery or Ridley Scott's 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Whatever the demerits of these other movies... Ugh!

YouTube Link: the film's opening credits.

Nacho Libre

Nacho Libre is director Jared Hess's second film. His first was Napoleon Dynamite, and what the two have in common is a certain absurdist humor found in the quirks of settings that are just off the beaten path, and so slightly behind the times. In Napoleon Dynamite, that setting is Preston, Idaho; in Nacho Libre, it is Oaxaca, Mexico.

Hess's comedy is sufficiently understated that it's not even completely clear whether or not Nacho Libre is meant to be a period piece. It is suffused with the aura of the 1970s, not least in lead character Nacho's choice of what he terms "recreation clothes": a thin pastel blue sweater plus cream slacks. Nacho is a rather unsuccessful monk with dreams of becoming a lucha libre fighter so he can afford better ingredients for the dinners her serves up to the monastery's orphans. On the side, he also has more than a passing fancy for the new nun in town, Encarnación. So he eagerly casts off old habits and enters the world of spectacle that is Mexican wrestling: a world of masked avengers and dreadful sartorial taste. But again, it's not certain whether his penchant for "stretchy pants" and frilly blouses (in a scene at the local wrestling promoter's elaborately decorated residence) is a function of period or location. Either way, the film seems to reverse L P Hartley's famous observation that "the past is another country; they do things differently there." Here there do things differently in Mexico because it has the aura of the past.


But this a past that is treated with delight and nostalgia. Nacho Libre is a strangely quaint and understated movie. And that's true even with Jack Black playing Nacho's role, and despite the fact that so much of the comedy is slapstick: fart jokes, turd jokes, midget wrestler jokes, and all. For the pacing is slow, at times even stately. Scenes often begin with what is almost a still image, foregrounding characters against countryside or architecture in a style almost reminiscent of Eisenstein's ¡Que Viva Mexico!, were it not for the notable use also of vibrant, saturated color. Then after a gag, Hess's editing almost always holds the shot for an extra beat, a pause in which nothing really happens except that we both register the joke and also the fact that it has no real consequence. In the Mexico that the film depicts, what seems comic to us is merely everyday reality.

So the paradoxical result of the movie is that despite, for instance, Jack Black's relentless deployment of a comic faux-Mexican accent, or co-star Héctor Jímenez's initial portrayal as a semi-feral beast scratching for nacho chips in a dirty back alley, or even the ambience of the wrestling world itself, with its high camp and low blows, the Oaxaca that the film presents is homely rather than ludicrous, sentimental rather than savage. It's as though Mexico incarnated all our yesterdays, or perhaps (like small-town Idaho) a place we might inhabit, and might even still want to inhabit, if it weren't that fate had led us elsewhere.

YouTube Link: the film trailer.