Sin Nombre - Zug der Hoffnung

Let's call this film a documentary. Sure, these were actors following a script. But more importantly, it documents a segment of life that few readers in the developed world have any insight into.

For those who avoid graphic violence, I suggest reading the section on this site that describes specifically what it is, and shut your eyes selectively. I did; but still couldn't relax enough to have dinner afterward until I downed several shots of Scotch. I was shaken, my throat constricted, and imbued with a feeling that may be a mild dose of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

But documentaries are like that. And when I read that the writer-director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, had actually lived with his subjects, and risked his life voluntarily, as they do out of routine necessity, I consider the least I can do is vicariously experience this reality. It is a reality that I see every day in the frightened eyes of those stunted young men congregating around "Home Depot" looking for a day's wages.

It reflects a life so mean, so violent, that the lawless Tijuana is a Nirvana compared to their home slums of Honduras and Guatemala. So first they come to Mexico, then ride the trains to the ultimate goal, America. In doing so they run a gauntlet of dangers that could only be conveyed in a dramatization such as this.

Empathy, compassion to all in our society, is a luxury for those born into a world where such emotion is the norm. Even in America's imperfect society, the rule of law predominates and the random violence is still newsworthy. The people in this film, especially the gang members had no such choice. These gangs provide a circle of affection and caring, but it is defined by the contrast between those who are their "homies" and the outsiders, the other gangs, for whom cruelty has no limits.

On a day trip last week to Baja California, we were stopped at a check point configured exactly like the one in the film. A single soldier in bullet proof vest surrounded by sand bags with a 50 caliber machine gun pointed at our car. My friend struck up a conversation with the guard; they both smiled, and we went on our way, to stop at a bakery right before crossing the border and heading to our home in Encinitas.

Similar check points; but for those refugees in "Sin Nombres" huddled in the empty car on the truck, their lives depended on not being seen. If they had been spotted, and then run out of fear, the machine gun would have killed them in a second, by soldiers hardened by the same violence they face.

My day trip to Mexico, while covering same type of territory, could not have been more different. I had my American Express Card and an American Passport, along with a cloak of protection by the norms of an ordered society. Those depicted in the film had none of this. Their lives were determined at the moment of their birth, with choices so limited that their desperate Odyssey to reach what was my birthright was their best available option .

This is an important film. Perhaps it should be edited with the more horrible graphic acts simply alluded to, to make it more accessible to a wider audience in America. While it provides no political prescription, it conveys an accurate picture of the reality of life just below our border.

If there is to be a political plan to addressing our "illegal immigrant" problem, at the least it should be informed by the road taken by those depicted in this powerful film.

Let's be clear from the outset, this is a dark, bleak and violent movie. The episodes in-between the on-screen savagery, consist of a lot of regret, anxiety and a deep, deep sadness.

Having said that, I also think that this is one of the most important movies I have seen in quite awhile, buried unfortunately amidst the clutter of beginning-of-the-year garbage releases and the upcoming summer blockbusters. I wish this movie had a much higher profile, in fact I think that this movie should be required viewing in high-schools all across the US and Canada.

It should also be seen by all those people who think about immigrants as a pest and as parasites who come to take away their jobs and be a drain on their resources, abusing the social system or whatever. The same people who watch Lou Dobbs and his "one man crusade" to save America from the invading plague of illegals. The minute-men who gleefully think that the wall now separating the US from Mexico is the greatest thing since the pyramids. The same people that after having spewed their vitriol, hatred and bile against immigrants have no problem with Juan mowing their lawn and Consuela looking after their snot-nosed mortally obese children, and Miguel picking-up all the s*it they leave in the streets, malls and every other place one can throw garbage in.

Maybe, just maybe, watching this movie will at least give them a glimpse into the lives, backgrounds and destinies of these people, who are abused, mistreated and forgotten by almost everybody, people who basically have come to symbolize a type of disposable human garbage, that truly are without a face, an identity and "sin nombre", without name. Perhaps we could all come to understand what it is that drives these waves of humanity to risk it all for even the promise of a better future. Then we could all come to realize that "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" are not exclusively American values, but rather universal values to which all people aspire to.

Even amidst all the doom and gloom of the movie there are some sublime moments of beauty, humanity and yes even hope. It was quite hard at times for me to watch this movie, not because of what I saw, but because I can relate to what I saw and be reminded of a time in my life I wish I could forget, but know I can't. It will be part of me until the day I die. I want people to learn and understand instead of being so quick to judge and dismiss the plight of other fellow human beings.

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF THE SITUATION WAS REVERSED?

Directed by the young talent Cary Fukunaga, a winner of the Sundance Film Festival Directing award, the film focuses on a combination of issues in South America, from involvement of kids and teenagers in Mexican gangs to what it takes for those who decide to leave South and Central America and seek greener pastures in the U.S.

The story follows two main characters, Casper and Sayra, played by lesser-known actors Edgar Flores and Paulina Gaitan. While Casper is the member of the feared gang Mara Salvatrucha, his faith connects him with Sayra, a Honduran emigrant that travels with her father and uncle together with the other emigrants on a freight train to the U.S.

On this journey together, as Casper tries to escape his faith and Sayra to meet hers, the main characters are slowly blending together, complete each other through their diversity, while they have to face the rough side of life in today's Mexico.

As a result, the film has a gripping, disturbing, moving sour-sweet blend to it, and is exactly the type of the film where it's unpredictability, natural change of pace, and lots of eye candy in the scenery, makes you part of the story until the credits role, making you beg for more inside.

Fukunaga's film feels so real not only thanks to his time spent in Mexico and his first hand experience with both, emigrants and immigrants he met before and while shooting the film, his cast of actual members of the Mara gang, perfect editing and combination of locations and the effort he took while filming to get the best out of his actors ("apart from beating them", he joked at Vary), makes the film one of the best feature debuts I've ever seen.

In Sin Nombre, first-time writer-director 31-year-old Cary Joji Fukanaga has crafted a uniquely moving film experience that dramatizes with authenticity the drive among the poor in Latin America to pull up roots and seek a better life in the U.S. Transcending genres and styles, Sin Nombre, translated "without a name", is performed by mostly non-professional local actors whose weathered faces mirror the harsh realities of their life. The film is shot by cinematographer Adriano Goldman with 35mm film rather than digital-video which is today's norm and avoids stylistic clichés such as hand-held cameras and dizzier-than-thou fast cutting.

Opening in Tapachula in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico with a saturated color palette of deep red and orange, the trajectory of this low-budget, but beautifully shot thriller follows two parallel threads that meet in the middle. It begins with the initiation of a new member into the Mara Salvatrucha gang, in this case, a twelve year old boy called Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer) who has been recruited into the gang by young Willy aka Casper (Edgar Flores). Smiley must endure a gang ritual where he is thrown to the ground and kicked and beaten thirteen times to prove his toughness. As if that is not enough, the pre-teen is then forced to shoot a prisoner from the Chavalas, a rival gang.

Breaking the rules, Willy takes Smiley with him to meet his secret girlfriend Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) but the clandestine meeting ends when sadistic gang leader, Lil' Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) finds out about it and tries to rape her with tragic consequences. In the second thread, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teenager is reunited with her father and decides to join him and her uncle on a perilous journey to New Jersey to meet other family members. In a powerful scene, they join other immigrants at a train crossing and then climb to the top of the railroad car of a passing train to begin the journey. One of the many dangers they face is that of being robbed by gangs or other poor Latinos who think they must have huge sums of money.

In this case, the robbers are Casper and Smiley who have been ordered to join Lil' Mago. When the leader tries to rape Sayra, however, Casper takes action which ensures that his future and that of Sayra will be inextricably linked. To reach the U.S., Sayra and Willy, now drawn together out of mutual need and attraction, have to overcome the network of covert operatives employed by the Mara gang, the danger of the border patrols, and the ordinary Mexicans who throw rocks at them and put their journey in peril. Powerful performances by Gaitan and Flores create an electric chemistry that wraps our hearts around their struggle to find release from their troubled past.

Winner of awards for directing and cinematography at Sundance, Sin Nombre has been attacked by some critics because it is a story about the truth of poor people's lives wrapped in a conventional framework. In my view, that is precisely what gives the film its strength. It is not an easy task for any immigrant who wants to make it to America, and Sin Nombre alerts us to the dangers as well as the opportunities. It succeeds not only as education but as theater, allowing the viewer not only to understand the perils illegal immigrants face but to relate emotionally to them as human beings.

Fukanaga was not a criminal or an immigrant but knows full well that the common thread existing among all people is that of being able to dream of a new day for themselves and the people they love. He spent two years doing research among the Mara Salvatrucha gang based in Mexico and Los Angeles, and in riding on the top of freight cars with Honduran and Salvadorean immigrants headed towards the U.S. border. The result is both deeply moving in its poetry and off-putting in its violence, a film of heartbreaking sadness but also one of joy and redemption, one of the best so far of 2009.

Instead of sensationalism for its own sake, director Fukunaga relates a gripping story straight, a clear narrative outlining the mental and physical journey taken by a young man recruited into a violent Latino gang and used by them to gather protection money to beef up the gang coffers; the young man makes choices that create difficulties his path one of both fear and self-awakening, and a parallel story of immigrants attempting to crash the U.S. border lines him up with a young woman of integrity. As noted by so many critics and reviewers, this is an often violent film, but how else to picture what we know has often made many border towns between the United States and Mexico unlivable? This is an important picture, a sincere and moving effort which captures a world most of us only read about