The Guatemalan Handshake

I find few films truly memorable, but this is one I haven't been able to shake off. There is something disruptive about this film. The untidiness of the story together with the bright summer colors and low economic status of the characters gives the film a tone of reality. The oddity of the characters, their inexplicable choices, and supernatural events give the film a dream like quality. The film does an incredible job of playing with our value system. Things are stolen, lost, and killed, but nothing is permanent. The film does manage to resolve many of the subplots by the end, but this is mainly by inference. The nuclear power plant seems to interact with the people in the story via power lines and the electric car.

Watching this movie was so tedious and laborious that I think I would have enjoyed a punch in the stomach far more. Now this is an indie movie that you've probably never heard of, and for good reason too, but pray that you stay lucky and never accidentally see it. Who knows, someone may break into your home, tie you and your family up, and force you to sit through it. Once is torture, more could be lethal.

This is like an un-funny version of Napoleon Dynamite... Except Napoleon Dynamite wasn't funny.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this movie. You'll thank me. And yourself. And which ever God you believe in.

Underneath the initial exterior---humor and absurdity that is, The Guatemalan Handshake is a true movie with such depth in themes, characters, and perspectives that it will make you laugh and scathe you at the same time.

Throughout T.G.H, the narrative scenes are presented to us objectively, and while there's great humor, the kind where we as an audience choose to laugh because of our own judgment, that same stylistic approach that's present throughout the whole movie progressively has an entirely different effect where we see for the first time, not through our own eyes, but through Ronald's. The ending at the same time resolves nothing, and everything, or to be more accurate, shows us that there was never anything to be resolved in the first place.

This movie is one of my favorite movies released this year, and a movie for its genre, one that's unmatched in complexity, dialogue, and in character development. There is so much in this movie that's revealed to the audience on several different levels that while very entertaining, requires the viewer's patience as we are there only to watch, and only until the attend do we really understand and in turn think back in nostalgia.

This movie, is a must see.

...everything that's wrong with "indie" film. This is a hatefully pretentious, yet mind- bogglingly stupid film, made more maddening by the apparent size of the budget.

It's as if the director sat down and wrote a list of the hundred quirkiest things he could think of, and then just strung them together into a "screenplay," thinking he was too much of an artiste to worry whether it made sense, or meant anything, or had any connection whatsoever to the experience of real human beings. 'Cause to try to actually reflect real life or tell a real story is so cliché, right?

The truth (apparently lost on most adherents to this unfortunate genre) is that "indie" films have been around long enough to have their own catalog of clichés, and this movie is nothing but cliché, cliché on top of cliché with cliché garnish. It's like every character works at Tchotchky's, but instead of flair, each one has to wear fifteen pieces of cliché. Todd Solondz would think this was indie garbage.

I've seen reviews that praise this film's multitude of interesting characters. In fact, every scene is about the same person: the director. He seems to be constantly insisting how quirky, how indie, how profound he is. Well, anyone can write an eccentric character. What's difficult is to make an eccentric character believable as an inhabitant of planet Earth, an achievement the director does not even attempt. There are no back stories, no explanations for how these people became who they are or why they feel the way they do. It's just a pile of writer's invention, and we're supposed to be impressed--nay, moved by it. It's not moving, it's not funny, it's totally intellectually lazy, and wretchedly proud of itself.

The most hateful thing about movies like this is that their only goal (as far as I can tell) is to deceive. To deceive audiences, critics and festival-goers into thinking that the director is a profound and creative man, a complex individual whose scope of imagination is matched only by the intensity of his empathy. Baloney. This was not a story that was dying to get out, nor a reflection of deep seated passions, nor a portrait of hometown nostalgia. It was an exercise in narcissism by someone who treats the art form like his vanity table. But people buy it. The reviews are mostly good. The user comments on this thread are unfathomably adulatory. What can one say? People are gullible. And stuff like this intimidates them into thinking they liked it. I didn't. I hated it. Can you tell?

The cinematography was good.

I originally saw this film at Slamdance, and it left me wanting more. While it's visually arresting, the ideas all seem brilliant but incoherent. I struggled with the puzzle for a year. It took me that long to come around to the conclusion that it didn't all have to add up. That unlike most cinema, where there's the thematic wrap-up at the conclusion... this film doesn't leave you with that same sense of Hollywood satisfaction. It jumps through characters each struggling with their place in the world; each slamming and being slammed in an unpredictable fashion. And this is what I was left with. Not a neatly wrapped present but an open box that's had its guts dumped all over the ground. This is a film that I imagine will get better each time you watch it. Familiarity with the huge cast of characters, and their relationships to each other will only assist with interpretation. But brain-candy aside, the moments in the film are enough to keep you smiling. 8/10