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Entertainment | March 2007
Three Amigos and a Mexican Wave Saibal Chatterjee - financialexpress.com
| (L-R) Alfonso Cuaron, nominated for an Oscar in the adapted screenplay and film editing categories for the film 'Children of Men,' director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, nominated for an Oscar for best picture for 'Babel,' and Guillermo Del Toro, nomianted for an Oscar for best foreign film for 'Pan's Labyrinth,' arrive at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, February 25, 2007. (Reuters/Mario Anzuoni) | On Academy Awards night, Mexico, a country that produces no more than 50-odd films a year, had as many nominations as Britain – 16. The best foreign language film contender, odds-on favourite Pan’s Labyrinth, was a surprise loser, but the Latin American nation as a whole scooped up four statuettes, one each for art direction, make-up, cinematography (all three for Pan’s Labyrinth) and original musical score (Gustavo Santaolalla in Babel).
Surprising? Not for those that have been tracking the recent trajectory of the careers of three Mexican émigrés – Alfonso Cuaron, 45; Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 43; and Guillermo del Toro, 42. With their unique sensibility and marvellously individualistic narrative styles, they have cemented the gains of the Mexican New Wave. The three directors live outside Mexico – Inarritu and del Toro in Los Angeles, Cuaron in New York - but they retain their bases back home. They believe in their roots, but not in borders, and that enables the trio to float across boundaries and connect with the world without the effort showing.
Cuaron made his debut in 1991 (Love in the Time of Hysteria), del Toro in 1993 (Cronos) and Inarritu in 2000 (Amores Perros). They have since ventured out of Mexico, handling major Hollywood studio projects and fiercely indie efforts with equal ease.
They have miraculously managed to retain their ability to serve up startlingly personal films while working within the American studio system, which usually tends to reduce the most original of filmmaking talents into peddlers of assembly-line cinematic consumables. The past year was their – and Mexican cinema’s – annus mirabilis. In 2006, Inarritu, del Toro and Cuaron, who share a deep bonding as friends and creators and routinely sit in on each other’s script meetings and editing sessions, crafted three of the world's most remarkable films – Babel, Pan’s Labyrinth and Children of Men.
Interestingly, none of them is a Mexican film in the strictest sense of the term. Inarritu’s Babel is a Hollywood-backed multi-locational drama that straddles a wide geographical expanse. Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is set in Spain in the aftermath of the Civil War, while Cuaron’s Children of Men is an adaptation of British writer PD James’ futuristic novel about a world plagued by lawlessness and reproductive sterility.
Indeed, most films made in Mexico today are low budget ventures. Babel and Children of Men couldn’t have been produced there although del Toro might have considered filming Pan’s Labyrinth in his home country. And therein lies a tale. Given half a chance, these filmmakers would happily return to Mexico, but conditions aren’t quite conducive out there.
One of the country’s best-known international stars, Gael Garcia Bernal (he cannot but be second to Salma Hayek), was quick to douse the hype and hoopla that the strong Mexican showing at the Oscars generated. Seconded by Diego Luna, an actor with whom he shared screen space in the picaresque Cuaron film, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Bernal pointed out that all three Mexican directors being feted now for their achievements were compelled to go overseas in the face of apathy from the local industry, government and filmmakers.
The fact, however, remains that the Mexican film industry is on the upswing – it produced 53 films in 2006, up from 14 in 2002. According to the government-run Mexican Film Institute, the number is expected to cross 60 in 2007. Measures to help films made locally, like one that helps producers recoup 10% of their cost on completion of a film, are in place, but as with most things bureaucratic in Mexico, they are allegedly entangles in red tape.
But all said and done, Mexico is a land of natural storytellers. It’s a country rich in myths, fables and legends – sounds a tad like India – and its film industry has existed for a hundred years. As a filmmaking nation, Mexico realised its full potential only in the 1940s and saw its golden era unfold around the same time that it did in India. But its new wave was a wee bit late to get off the ground.
It was in the early 1990s that Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate (1992), an adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s magic realist novel, triggered the movement that Inarritu, del Toro and Cuaron are now beginning to push to its logical conclusion. A few years after Arau’s film, actor-playwright-filmmaker Antonio Serrano adapted his own play to make Sex, Shame and Tears (1999). And, of course, one-time unbilled Luis Bunuel assistant Arturo Ripstein, among Mexico’s most admired filmmakers, has continued to be a force since the 1970s.
The filmmaking traditions that Inarritu, del Toro and Cuaron represent is as rich as any. Each has a signature voice and a distinct vision but all three, in essence, deal with the same humanist concerns. Inarritu conjures up these amazingly twisted tales with multiple narrative strands. Del Toro explores intriguing variations of the horror/fantasy genre in the manner of an infinitely more evolved present-day George A Romero. Cuaron, who helmed Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, traverses across genres and production categories.
On the face of it, the three amazing amigos may seem to have nothing in common, but their plea is the same: can we make the world a better place to live in? Their dystopian dreams are actually an act of unravelling the face of reality, heightened manifold. Such is the thematic and emotional depth of their social/political/philosophical ruminations that they blur all genre divides completely. Add to that the visual sweep that they bring into the frame and you have films that are as tantalisingly close to perfection as cinema can be.
Inarritu, del Toro and Cuaron have age on their side. So this is only the beginning of what could be truly exciting times not only for Mexican cinema, but also for all film lovers around the globe. |
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