Text #000225

The bishop delivers a sermon addressed to the people. It resembles the first of the Christian commandments — "Thou shalt not kill." Those who pour blood on the earth given to us by heaven are neither Catholics nor Christians. This sermon seems to accompany the wave of reprisals sweeping through the country. Soldiers surround the terrorists' hideout — shoot the resisters, shoot the surrendered. Students who participated in the unrest were arrested — they are beaten, dragged along the ground, bloodied, lifeless bodies are thrown on the cement floor...
The dictator must take the parade. For the first time, his successor will stand next to him at an official ceremony. The Secret Service warns that the escaped Medina is preparing an assassination attempt. No, this is not a reason to cancel the celebrations: the dictator is not afraid of death, his days are already numbered.
Medina hid in the attic: from here you can see the balcony where the dictator will appear with his retinue. Medina is holding a rifle with a telescopic sight. What is guiding him now? Yes, he can take revenge on his enemy, but will the situation in the country change even a little from this?
Then — one after another — a chain of murders. Medina pulls the trigger: no, he was aiming not at the dictator, but at the successor — and now he is dead. The dictator does not have time to recover from the shock, as a guy appears from somewhere and puts four bullets into him in a row. Soldiers break into Medina's hideout — they probably knew where he was hiding before, but now the role assigned to him has been played and he is shot.
And now Santos can take power into his hands as its legitimate successor. The murder of the dictator is blamed on the opposition, the opposition is drowned in blood. Keeping in the shadows, pulling all the strings, a gray silent man can come out into the light, declare himself a national hero, the savior of the country,
the long-awaited deliverer from bloody internecine strife. With such a disappointing finale, this tense, master-made tape ends. By the way, she is the debut in the feature film of documentarian Alfred Gurolla, and many of her scenes are characterized by clarity, conciseness, persuasiveness of the document.
The point, however, is not in the artistic merits of the tape — they are quite obvious and could hardly be a reason for a dispute. But what are its political conclusions? Do the authors want to inspire their viewers with the idea of the futility of fighting? What are personal fortitude, courage, courage, sacrifice worth, if in the end you still turn out to be a toy of forces whose real intentions are unknown to you? Or maybe, on the contrary, the authors want to protect us from romantic indifference, to show how complex, how intricate the labyrinths of power are, to warn against the desire to act without seeing a clear goal in front of them, without knowing the real alignment of forces? As you can see, the reason for these contradictory conclusions lies in the picture itself, and that is probably why the press conference of the Mexican delegation, held the morning after the premiere, immediately turned into an arena of heated discussion.
— Why is it in your film, — the delegate of Nicaragua asks, — that the rejection of political struggle is so praised, while it is becoming more widespread in Latin American countries?
— We have presented a fictional country on the screen, — the performer of the role of the dictator, the wonderful actor Rafael Baledon, tries to object to him, — a country that does not really exist, but which could be.
— I'm not talking about the country, but about the spirit of our time. You don't reflect the events that are really happening in Latin America today.
It is clear that the actor does not understand either the vehemence of his opponent, or the reproaches presented to him. But he still tries as calmly and thoroughly as possible to explain the position of the creators of the tape:
— The fact is that the script of the picture was written in 1997, he won an award at one of the competitions as the best script of the year and in 1998 this film was shot on it. At that time, there were not yet the facts that you have in mind — the events in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In addition, the political situation in Mexico today is not what it is in other countries. We are still far from the need to embark on the path of armed struggle. Of course, everything that happens in other parts of our continent is close to us, we are very keenly experiencing all this, but our film speaks about the situation that preceded the one that is now taking place in Latin America. https://king-567.com/