Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes

Luis Buñuel might have enjoyed this antic fantasy, adapted from a story by Gabriel García Márquez, about an ignorant couple who find the title character (played by director Fernando Birri) washed ashore like driftwood on their crab-infested beach. Is he a fallen angel or simply a freak of nature? No one can say (the old man himself is apparently mute), but after giving him a home in their chicken pen rumors begin to spread of a miraculous visitation, and the unfortunate 'angel' soon becomes both an object of worship and a target of ridicule, sometimes simultaneously. Before too long he's the star attraction in a frenzied carnival midway, competing against the so-called Spider Woman (with her absurd, 'explanatory' semi-porn performance art video) and other sideshow curiosities. The more emotional national characteristics of each country in the Italian-Cuban-Spanish co-production team combine to make it a fast, crude parable of innocence corrupted, blurring the line between religious ecstasy and show-biz hysteria.

What would you do if you found a sick, decrepit angel in your backyard? "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" comments on faith and doubt as it explores the arrival of a winged old man who washes ashore into the lives of Pelayo and Elisenda. They put him first into a chicken coop(because of his wings), then on display and charge admission for the townspeople to see him. A doubting priest provides comic relief and pokes fun at the not easily convinced Catholic Church. The soundtrack is excellent. All fans of Garcia Marquez must not go another minute without seeing this movie.

Although there is admittedly a non-Hollywood flavor to this movie--a cultural difference that will not be to everyone's taste--it's pretty faithful to Marquez's short story. Many of my students who read the story become nearly hostile about its cryptic, impenetrable refusal to make "logical" sense. The human characters behave abysmally; the angel is unreadable and ultimately undefined; the story is not so much a story as a long comment.

It has been said that the angel is actually a mask for Marquez himself. In that regard, this film is a fine reminder of the author's own resistance to categorization.

Although Marquez was involved in the production of this cinematic adaptation of his story, this is a work of Birri, which all the other reviewers on this board seem to miss. Of the harsh reviews of this film posted, only one of them actually sees the film for what it is, and they hate it for being what it is: a critique of imperialism via an experimental visual narrative.

If you're looking to teach your short story via this piece, you will fail and end up a frustrated lazy professor, and if you're looking for Hollywood mediocrity jacked up with special effects, go watch a Marvel movie, but if you want a story that will surprise you and question your views and ways of seeing, then you will find it here.

I was forced to watch this movie tonight for a class in Spanish Lit. I like the Marquez story that the movie is based on, so although I wondered how the filmmakers would turn a 7-page story into a full-length film, I hoped for the best. Unfortunately for me and a roomful of groaning students, the movie basically ignores the winged title character, and instead elaborates a few details into painfully awkward sub-plots. For example, much of the movie is about a traveling carnival, with at least three fairly hard-core sex scenes (one in the form of the lowest of low-budget 80's music videos). Maybe Marquez just didn't see potential in focusing on the carnival; he only spent half of a paragraph describing it, instead of an hour of film. This was the real problem with the film: the filmmakers hacked each interesting detail to death, instead of allowing the audience to enjoy the incongruities of the story. The small details that were charming in the story (like the girl who turned into a spider for disobeying her parents) are so thoroughly mutated that I found myself wishing Marquez had been a supremely dull author, so as not to inspire this misguided piece of trash. The actors seemed nervously aware of how awful their movie was, save a smiling boy of four or five, who was young and naive enough not to be ashamed by the movie.

The special effects were laughable--anything related to flying was filmed at an angle up towards the flier, whose unseen feet we just assumed not to be touching the ground. And if you still have any doubts, in one scene of the couple putting their child to bed, they actually used a life-sized doll instead of a baby. Q.E.D.