Sonora

You know those films which you can not take your eye off. Well, this is one is like this. From minute one to the end you feel like we're there, with the characters. Goof performances, great direction and beautiful photography. I really recommend it.

Alejandro Springall' s 6th feature film tells a story at the beginning of the century in northern Mexico, when the United States closed its southern border and Chinese Mexicans were victims of discrimination. Cinematography is interesting. However, the use of aerial shots is abused, so the viewer soon gets tired. The soundtrack is totally nondescript. But "Sonora"s main problem is its lack of a good script. At one point we have up to ten individuals, perhaps more, traveling through the desert in a car, but the script does not focus on any of them to tell the story from their point of view. If the script had focused, for example, on the Chinese immigrant's family, and four or five characters had been erased from the script, an interesting, even poignant, story could have been told. As it stands, the film feels like bad editing of a much longer story. However, if you like desert aerial shots, you wont be disappointed.

Ostensibly a western (although set in 1931), or just a "disparate group facing danger, who will survive?" movie, "Sonora" is both a look at some forgotten Mexican history, and a commentary on asylum and migration.

The usual scenario... people thrown together by chance facing danger... does rely on some of the darker parts of Mexican history (the Fascist anti-Chinese purges in Sonora, the mass deportation of Mexicans by the United States in the early 1930s), it also brings to mind the disparate and desperate reasons for making dangerous trips through the desert (today to the United States, then, merely across state lines into Baja California). The Wongs flee racial prejudice, Doña Rosario and Pilar seek family reunification, the Commario flees the law, etc. Smugglers (booze in 1931, drugs today), racists, the elements... all complications, sometimes deadly, faced by those having to leave their homes today. What makes it particularly worth watching is that the only member of the expedition, the guide, Emeterio (Juan Cossio), is also a displaced person... when introduced, he is a deracinated "Indian", but emerges as a leader when he returns to his own cultural traditions.

As a European, i know nothing about the desert or the politics in 1930. Even this movie was so foreign for me, it was really beautiful and i enjoyed it a lot. It is nice to learn new cultures.

Uneven but nonetheless worthwhile. Besides some surprising acting and the Sonora's desert deathly beauty, this film's unquestionable merit is uncovering an buried chapter in Mexican history: the sistematic persecution of Chinese immigrants in the 1930s.