When the Lumiere brothers presented their invention in public (December 28, 1895) in Paris, the masses of spectators were amazed at the "magic" and the dreams that enveloped them from the screen. Besides being the producers of a fairground trick, entertainment for the unwary. The Lumieres were extremely efficient and skilled individuals and conceived their proposal as an avant-garde continuation of the Impressionists' work in Painting. They wanted to make everyday life visible. Thus the cinema remained an exercise in invocation of the immanent: The means of transport, the departure of the factory workers: the first steps of a baby ... the underlying theme of all the work of the Lumiere was the human being.
Eleven decades later, in the Dominican Republic, it has not yet been possible to make the cinema appropriate the theme of the Lumiere, humanity, and it is common to see films whose relationship with the interior of the human being is ... scarce; (not to mention null). We are grateful that this is not the case of the film that gives its title to this reflection. Being human is not just having desires; it is also having yearnings; it is not just fantasizing, there is room for dreams and utopias; It is not only to succeed (woe to the protagonists who survive plane crashes, bursts of submachine guns and fast and furious accidents even and when their actors do not manage to survive very similar accidents) it is also to fail in the attempt. Like the baby who cannot take his first steps without stumbling in the Lumiere short, neither does Amin's baby manage to make his father return or move his murderers with his screams in Etzel's film...
Amin Abel Hasbun is a dead man from the internal brawls of a Cold War that touched us indirectly and the team of this production would do poor service to Dominican society if, for the sake of supposed profitability, they ve refused to recreate the harsh daily life of the persecuted ... A precedent that we must not forget; because the tentacles of state violence; today asleep, are still dangerous and subtle. I would also like to point out that 339 Amín Abel is a film with many hopeful overtones; its director and screenwriter is not a cynic; it is just that the situation in which the protagonist's widow was involved was very cynical and Etzel chose (there was no alternative) to show us what that situation was like with its great bitterness and its tiny triumphs.
