Men with Guns

I just fell upon this movie while watching the IFC channel and I hadn't been back from Guatemala for long. After living there amongst the natives I was able to get to know them better and understand their culture more. Seeing this film brought back a lot of those memories and reminded me of the many stories I heard of the army's genocidal tendencies towards the indigenous people of Guatemala. The cinematography for this film is simple, but it shows the beautiful landscapes and run down third world towns in a way to almost show us the same details that we would see if we were really there. We have to remember that the characters portrayed in this movie are very real, they may not have the same names, but they do exist. Even the war vets who have gone to levels so low we cannot even imagine. If you would like to understand what went on in Southern Mexico and Guatemala during the 80's, I would strongly recommend this film. It left a very strong impression on me.

In John Sayles, 1997 film Men With Guns, a widowed doctor, Humberto Fuentes (Fernando Luppi) leaves his practice in an unnamed Latin American country to search for medical students he trained to be doctors in Indian villages under the "Alliance for Progress". Filmed almost entirely in Spanish with English subtitles and based on stories by Francisco Goldman, the film is a fictional adventure story but suggestive of real events. Sayles has said, "As I was writing it, I made sure that almost all of the incidents are based on events that have happened somewhere else, almost to the exact detail."

Naively unconvinced that there is any danger from a guerilla war in the interior, Dr. Fuentes travels to remote areas to discover his "legacy". Soon he finds out the reality. His tires are removed, his wallet is stolen, his life is threatened, and he cannot get any information because people won't speak to him out of fear. He sees starving people, destroyed villages, and people who have lost their hope, while the world is ignorant of what is taking place. Dr. Fuentes picks up several travelling companions along the way; and learns more about the struggles they have endured. Each has lost something close to them. Domingo (Damian Delgado), a soldier has deserted his army, Conejo (Dan Rivera Gonzales), a very wise young boy has lost his parents, an ex-priest Padre Portillo (Damian Alcazar) has lost his faith, and a native woman has lost her voice after being raped by soldiers.

At the first village, a blind woman tells Dr. Fuentes that the "men killed one of his students with guns". When he asks her the reason, she says simply, "Because they had guns and we didn't". The film clearly shows the powerlessness of the Indians and peasants caught in the middle of a conflict they do not want to be involved in. Sayles shows peasants as little more than commodities who are used by the system: the Salt people, the Sugar people, the Coffee, Banana and Gum people, all surviving at subsistence level because of economic conditions beyond their control. The doctor finds out that it does not matter who is threatening the people, they are all just "men with guns" and Indians are just as capable of cruelty against their own people as government soldiers. Fuentes discovers that some of his students have been killed but keeps going from village to village to look for the rest. His expectations, however, are met only with one grim story after another. Weary but not despairing, he and his traveling companions set out on one last journey, a spiritual quest to find a city hidden in the rainforest called Circle of Heaven where the air is clear and there are no guns.

Men With Guns has a point to make but makes it early and often and there is little suspense or plot development in the last half of the film. Mr. Sayles has wisely kept the story as generic as possible but there is no indication of what the issues are or what the conflict is all about. It is well known that civilians and "innocent bystanders" are often the biggest victims in war. Beyond that, what is the film saying? Is it that resistance movements who might be fighting an uphill battle against a brutal dictator should lay down their arms? Aside from the problems I had with the issues, the characters come across as types rather than real people. Oblivious American tourists, played by Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody, are too laughable to even warrant being called stereotypes. Though credit must be given for tackling a subject that most filmmakers would rather not hear about, Men With Guns is overlong and lacking in dramatic impact. Eventually, it veers off into magical realism with much self-consciousness but little realism and no magic.

Following on the heels of the critical breakthrough of his previous film, _Lone Star_, writer-director John Sayles takes a real chance here.

Although he's long marched to beat of a different drummer, as they say, as one of the few truly independent American filmmakers, Sayles really goes out on the edge this time, giving us a film which is presented almost entirely in Spanish, with English subtitles, as he tells the tale of a doctor in an unnamed Latin American country who undertakes a journey into the rain forest in search of a group of young medical students he'd trained some years before. Not only does he expect us to put up with the subtitles, but he also fills the movie with a largely unknown cast (to most American audiences, that is), of Latin American actors and actresses.

Federico Luppi, the film's star, is an older actor and one I'm not familiar with. He has the air about him of a quiet, dignified man. A city-dweller, through and through, he has always bought into the government's version of the battle between mountain guerrillas and government troops. He's had no reason to doubt the stories nor to suspect otherwise.

Ultimately, though, as the title suggests, this is not a story about winners and losers, about the "official story," but about the effects on the daily lives of the country's people that "men with guns" can have. Whether they are soldiers or guerrillas, bandits or thieves, on the side of the good or the bad, they are simply "men with guns" and the people do what they say because of this simple fact.

The film's journey, started largely out of boredom (the doctor is nearly retired and looking for something to do with his time) gradually becomes a mythical, almost allegorical journey, as he moves from village to village, unsuccessful in his search. It begins to appear that most (all?) of his former students have been killed or otherwise incapacitated, viewed by the rebels or the villagers they went to serve as a danger.

Along the way, the doctor gradually picks up a group of traveling companions, including an army deserter, a former priest, a little boy, and a woman who has not spoken since she was raped by soldiers. The deserter and the priest tell their very poignant stories and the doctor is forced to gradually open his eyes to the realities of the world around him.

As they continue, ever deeper into the jungle, the story, which was never grounded in a specific reality anyway, becomes even more dreamlike and unreal, as the travelers seek out the mythical "Circle of Heaven," a village so high on a mountain and so deep in the forest that soldiers cannot find it and the people there live in freedom. This is a movie that truly verges into the area of magical realism which so many Latin authors provide in their novels, but which is seldom seen successfully on the screen.

If one is able to put up with the subtitles (there are moments when a couple of American tourists, one played by Mandy Patinkin, burst onto the screen, with their loud English and "ugly American" attitudes), the film is a real treat.

John Sayles has sometimes been criticized as a filmmaker for being more interested in telling his story than in fiddling with the camera angles and photography. If that's a valid criticism, I fear for the future of American film. In both _Lone Star_ and this film, Sayles shows us the value of a well-told story in a film, a virtue which increasingly seems to be disappearing, in favor of explosions and special effects. Very highly recommended. Rating: A.

Dreamlike, mythological, multilayered and almost mystical on the one hand, and on the other hand, vividly conveying the reality of Guatemala in the 1980s (which is what the film's story is mostly based on, though it draws in part from the present-day situation in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, where it was mostly filmed; I think that the Indian language we were hearing was Tzotzil Maya). This film is as understated as its blunt, simple title (by the way, all violence happens offscreen). And yet it is so multilayered that I am still trying to absorb its many levels. It is a "road movie," and it is a profound spiritual odyssey for the main character; it is a suspenseful and unpredictable thriller full of unexpected twists, and it is mythic... in fact, we gradually come to realize that the entire story is being told, like a traditional myth, by a Mayan mother to her little girl. A beautiful example of the Latin American "magical realism" style. This film gets an unhesitating score of 10 from me... in fact, I think I may consider this film among my lifetime top ten movies.

Barely edging out "The Spanish Prisoner" as the best film of 1998, "Men With Guns" offers quiet genius and delight for those willing to go beyond the mainstream. Although overlooked by most viewers John Sayles has basically incorporated the elemental characters of "The Wizard of Oz" and placed the dreams and desires of idealists in the cruel setting of the real world, where ever that might be. The setting of an unidentified Latin American country shows that things such as the atrocities performed by the men with guns can happen anywhere - in a developed Latin American nation or in the United States of America.

John Sayles, America's most prolific director, holds in his visions more insight into the complex workings of humanity than most other directors present in an abundance of visual effects and in-your-face techniques. AMPAS has yet again failed to recognize genuine substance but hopefully this film, another in a long line of accomplishments that presents wondrous film making and excellent storytelling, will not be forgotten.