FAR AWAY, SO CLOSE // A FILM REVIEW OF "OUR MOTHERS (NUESTRAS MADRES)"
Guatemala's Civil War is a subject that you may not know a lot about. The atrocities that the government made towards the Mayan people during the lengthy war (36 years, to be precise) is something that cannot be forgiven, but must be remembered. César Díaz's debut film OUR MOTHERS (NUESTRAS MADRES) doesn't exactly tell the tale of the Civil War itself, but instead focuses on the aftermath, and the hard look back into the past.
Armando Espitia is our eyes into the story, playing Ernesto Gonzalez, a forensic anthropologist who's job is identifying the bones of those killed in the war. Namely, those killed by the government soldiers and often buried in mass graves. His mother Cristina (Emma Dib) is a woman who would rather forget about the past and his father was one of the guerrilla soldiers lost in the battle, with his final whereabouts unknown. He doesn't know much about his father, but when he meets a grieving Mayan woman named Nicolasa (Aurelia Caal), the ghosts of the past come back to haunt him. Nicolasa's husband was killed by the soldiers in the 1980's and she's hoping that someone can locate and identify her husbands bones so that they can be together once again. Once Nicolasa shows Armando a picture of her husband alongside soldiers, his head begins to spin: he immediately recognizes one of the soldiers as his father and knows that he has to help her, as their fates are now intertwined.
Writer/Director Céasar Díaz creates a beautiful and unsettling frame to learn about the horrors of this war, but all at arms length. The film is quiet and sparse, with the mystery never fully twisting beyond where you can already assume it is going. It does begin to paint a captivating picture, just not an emotional one. A film called OUR MOTHERS should seemingly focus more on the stories of the women, not of the men. We do meet these women, from the powerful Mayan survivors to Ernesto's mother Cristina. But the majority of the story is simply about Ernesto, wondering how he can help tell their story. By placing the powerful story of the Mayan women in the eyes of a male protagonist, who's own story isn't nearly as rich, the emotional complexity we want and need simply isn't there. A surprise Camera d'Or winner at last years Cannes Film Festival, OUR MOTHERS is a quiet and slight film that leaves you wanting more. A more complex story, a wider lens into the Guatemalan Civil War and a deeper understanding of the women's own personal stories would have truly enriched the proceedings. What we are left with is a minimal tale of heartbreak from a missing father, and the quiet battle to find the truth of the past, even if it's buried in an unmarked grave.
GRADE: B-
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Céasar Díaz STARRING Armando Espitia, Aurelia Caal, Emma Dib, Julio Serrano Escheverría, Victor Moreira. Now Available in Virtual Cinemas.