Eréndira la indomable

This is why I say that some movies play a didactic role. Thanks to this one, I learned about that tarascan princess named ERENDIRA (means smiling morning in their language) who lived in the time when Spaniards arrive in Michoacán and she faced them as the most courageous of the male Indian soldiers. Ikikúnari means ''untamed'' and Eréndira, went to do something nobody has done before. She took a horse from the Spaniards and learn to ride it. Doing this, she also learned that without the horse, all Spaniards were just like them, only whiter, they were not giant monsters half horse and half man like some Indians believe! In that time, there were no horses in México and it was a mystery surrounding the soldiers, who ran so fast with those four legs under them... Eréndira was now at their own level. She could fight them now, but when she does and she proves her skills, her own people rejects her and it is then when she fights to death against the enemy. Excellent piece from Juan Mora Catlett, who also made RETORNO A AZTLAN, both in the original prehispanic language.

Overall, a very boring and uninteresting movie. The whole story could have been told in around 10% of the time with the proper timing, and no insight of characters is ever shown, let alone hinted at. It is just like an old-time movie with the good ones and the bad ones, with very crude stereotypes of the Purhépechas and the Spaniards (ie, the good ones and the bad ones, in case you'd wondered). Worse yet, since the film lacks a sound fiction plot, I looked for some serious re-enactment of history or faithful depiction of the customs and facts of the peoples depicted, to no avail whatsoever. I'm still searching for a good movie about Pre-Columbian peoples without so many clichés as this one and others, showing the real psychological and cultural clash between two cultures that finally merged into our modern Mexican culture, a movie beyond the images of "peaceful" Indians and the blood-thirsty Spaniards that all these films display.