Behind The Scene:The Spanish Revolution

The battle of the studio-made movie versus the independent auteur rages on in Hollywood but a Spanish revolution of new voices has changed the scene dramatically. No longer are Latino directors part of a fringe network making foreign language films seen only in art houses. Suddenly in crossover English new Latino directors from Mexico have found an international audience and entered the mainstream of movie magic. Born within four years of each other and all self-taught, three filmmakers in particular, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, have broken the foreign language film barrier by moving seamlessly back and forth between Spanish and English-language films, bringing to their more commercial productions the rhythms and perceptions of their Mexican heritage.

Gonzalez Inarritu began his career as a disk jockey at a Mexican radio station and went on to become one of the youngest producers in Mexican television. His first feature, “Amores Perros” in 2000, was nominated for an Oscar. Co-written with Guillermo Arriaga, it connects three stories of life, love and death. Gonzalez Inarritu and Arriaga switched from Spanish to English in 2004 and followed “Amores Perros” with Oscar-nominated “21 Grams,” another experiment in multiple story-telling. This year’s Oscar-nomination, ‘Babel’, is the third in their trilogy of multiple storylines following people from dramatically different regions and backgrounds on a cinematic journey leading to a common destination.

In “Babel,” writer and director explore the proverb that the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions. A wealthy tourist on a hunting expedition in North Africa generously presents his rifle to his native guide. With that random act, lives are changed forever from California to Tokyo. In the film, Gonzalez Inarritu’s sympathies for native peoples bewildered by the clashes and life-styles of intrusive foreigners gets full play. He coaxes superb performances from Adriana Barraza, as a Mexican nanny abandoned in the desert with two small children, and from Rinko Kikuchi, as a deaf mute teenager so achingly lonely she is willing to do anything to connect with another human being. His message is the common thread that connects us all.

Mexican compatriot Guillermo del Toro worked his way into the film business as a make-up man and an element of fantasy is present in all of his work. When dealing with reality, like Mary Poppins, del Toro believes that a spoonful of magic makes the medicine go down. In his Oscar-nominated film, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” Del Toro conflates the horrors of today with the horrors of Franco’s Spain in 1944 and asks hard questions with the voice of a child, the mesmerizing young actress Ivana Baquero. Placed in a desperately dangerous situation, Baquero’s Ofelia finds refuge and escape in a fantastical underground world presided over by the ambiguous figure of the god Pan. But del Toro, who also wrote the screenplay, knows, as every fantasy writer from Lewis Carroll to JK Rowling knows, even in a magical world, good and evil co-exist, actions have consequences and moral choices must be made.

If Gonzalez Inarritu and del Toro are relatively new to mainstream Hollywood, their Mexican compatriot Alfonso Cuaron has been on the scene for awhile. He directed the English language films, ‘The Little Princess’ (1995), ‘Great Expectations’ (1998), and ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ (2004), each subtlely infused with the colors and sensibilities of his native Mexico. Cuaron’s 2006 film, ‘Children of Men’, examines the present through the lens of the future. Britain in 2027 is so bleak that happiness is no longer an option. Bombed out and rotten, only survival counts but why bother when the human race faces imminent extinction after losing the ability to procreate? Embittered loner, Theo, played by Clive Owen, is given the task of whisking the last pregnant woman on earth to a rendez-vous with the ship ‘Tomorrow’ which will take her and her child to safety. Or will it? Neither viewer nor director is quite sure. And it’s in such questions of survival that each of these three edgy, imaginative, incisive directors from Mexico has found his voice. Viva pelicula and see you at the movies!