Padre Nuestro

Sometimes a film with certain narrative or structural weaknesses has so much excellence in its content that you are well rewarded if you just throw out your criticisms and enjoy the moments as they unfold.

"Sangre de mi Sangre" (the better title is the original "Padre Nuestro") was just given two showings at the Chicago Latino Film Festival. It's a film that deserves wider distribution. Perhaps overlong, and with a plot that is rather too complex and relies on coincidence a bit too much, this movie nevertheless sucks you emotionally into the lives of its characters, Mexican immigrants living at the margins in New York City. The core of the movie is the story of the two young Mexicans trying in their separate ways to survive in an alien environment. The plot revolves around stolen identity and personal interconnections as the two protagonists try to gain security through money or through relationships. The story recalls another masterpiece of ambivalence, "The Son", and I'll say no more, except to indicate that the conclusion of the action is richly satisfying, if harsh. Just a word about the performances: the director is clearly a genius at handling actors. The leads give virtuoso turns to their characterizations, and the cast throughout shows never a false note.

My wife and I saw Padre Nuestro, now called Sangre De Mi Sangre at a special showing at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and were treated to a question and answer session by the Director/writer, Christopher Zalla. The name of the movie was changed from Padre Nuestro to its new title in Mexico where it had a fairly wide distribution to avoid confusion with an earlier light weight comedy made in Chile with the same title. This movie is anything but light weight as it revolves around the gritty life experiences of illegal aliens struggling to survive in the United States in a dog eat dog world.

This movie contains wonderful performances from each of its four principal characters and Jesus Ochoa (Diego), who is the most well recognized of the Mexican cast, fills the screen with a performance as large as his girth. Armando Hernandez (Juan) deserves mention for an equally powerful performance with only a slightly lesser efforts from Jorge Adrian Espindola (Pedro) and Paola Mendoza (Magda, which certainly did not detract from the excellence of this film.

Filmed on location in a gritty industrial section of Brooklyn, the story contains a sense of believability with only a modest level of contrivance necessary to develop a credible, seamless story line. A powerful movie, which measured up to its success at the Sundance film festival in 1987. The movie will have a limited release in the United States at a single theatre in five city's during the month of May, 2008, so it may not be widely seen, which would be a shame. I look forward to seeing Christopher's next film which we are told will be set in a Bolivian prison for Brad Pitt's Plan B Entertainment and which may star Don Cheadle.

The acting is unbelievable, almost as unbelievable as the plot. The movie advances its plot on coincidences and is not what I expected.

The director seemed to look for a convoluted plot to appear smart and gritty, but at the same time, one of the characters is so extremely naive. The message given at the end of the movie is that being cunning outweighs good intention, yet I wonder how did the good character was able to advance so far in a city such as New York.

Overall the plot ends taking everything down that the acting brings forward. Jesus Ochoa is a step above all the actors in this movie, and did as good as possible as his character let him do.

Mr. Zalla is a very good director, he gets wonderful performances from the actors and demonstrates a great sense of visual composition. However the writing is sloppy at best, the story does not hold water, is filled with inconsistencies and maintains a gruesome, almost sordid tone to a movie that could have said just as much about the condition of immigrants without stripping them of their humanity. That the characters are flawed is expected, but must they all be beyond hope of redemption? A day after seeing this movie, I am still making lists of all the details that did not add up or were entirely too coincidental for such an otherwise "realistic" movie. The soundtrack by Brian Cullman is excellent. One wishes there was more of it.

I went to see this movie, with a view to getting a grip on the behind-the-scenes real-life struggles in the realm of the rampant illegal immigration. To sum it up, I left the big-screen room, with an embedded emblem in my mind which had inscribed on it "poverty,hunger, and desperation can trigger the barbaric side of us".

Some brilliant acting from the four principal characters: Diego, Juan, Pedro, and Magda. In fact, it was their virtuoso contribution that gave the flick its unfolding narrative, which nicely touches upon the dogfight arena that we rarely get to hear about even today. A movie which surely keeps you glued to the screen till the very last second it leaves the screen. Definitely worth its salt.

A good job by Christopher Zalla.. From the very beginning, we could see that Juan, innocent as he was deep inside, could not resist the madness inside him that was triggered by his struggle, desperation, hunger, etc, similar to the spontaneous effects of gravity in this universe. Each man for himself. No friendship. If anything similar to friendship, then conditions for cooperation. A nice rule/formula, played out nicely not only in this movie, but also within the real-life framework of the illegal immigrant society, facing deportation the moment they are in the hands of the cops. For them, they know only one language : "struggle", with it's only words :"food","money","shelter".

I'd recommend this film to anyone who either has not woken up to the reality of cruelty and hardships which illegal immigrants in the US face, or who questions it in any way. A nice eye-opener for us.