A Muralha Verde

A simple story of a professional city dweller who moves with his family to the Peruvian jungle to tame the wilderness is turned by the director into a mesmerizing, timeless film exploring the deep bonds of love, community, and connection.

The film does a good job contrasting the frustrating, cold sterile bureaucracy of the city to the lush, warm, and sensual beauty of nature. Juxtaposing time and places, the director uses flashbacks to memory to weave together an absorbing film based on the director's own tragic personal experiences.

The film features excellent performances and the use of interesting camera angles in personal, intimate settings making one feel like a voyeur. This is a film whose images and characters will remain with you long after watching it. As Pauline Kael of the New Yorker wrote: "The film's final sequence is masterful movie making... a haunting glimpse of humanity that lingers in the mind"

I have mixed feelings about La muralla verde. I thought the ending tied the whole move together, but it was painful to sit through the rest of it. Things didn't make sense until the end of the movie, and for me that is too late. There were many flashbacks, and sometimes there was nothing to tell you that it was a flashback. The juxtaposition with the scenes in the jungle and the scenes in the city was done nicely. The differences between the 2 were striking, especially when placed back to back like that. However, some of the camera shots were distracting and irritating, so much so that I had to look away. I found this movie to be interesting because I couldn't imagine a family " roughing it" in the jungle and giving up city life. However, I think this movie was just too distracting and distorted to enjoy watching it and get the whole effect. It definitely shows the major contrasts between the city and the jungle, which is good for learning, but it could have been less confusing and still would have had the same effect.

Based on the experiences of director Armando Robles Godoy as he established his homestead in the Peruvian jungle, The Green Wall is "a bitter and beautiful movie," in which "Godoy translates his experience into film poetry rather than flat reportage and uses the physical environment (exquisitely photographed by his cameraman brother, Mario) as a great natural mystery, idyllic but cruel, rich but unyielding to the will of a handsome young settler (Mexican star Julio Aleman, in a vibrant performance) who is determined to survive there with his family." The idyll is broken both by the bureaucracy in far-off Lima, and at the film's end: "The blow comes from the rain forest near their house, where father and son have constructed a mock city of clay as a symbol of the civilized stupidity they sought to escape. The film's final sequence, an almost wordless funeral, is masterful movie making, a haunting glimpse of humanity that lingers in the mind" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker). "A masterpiece!" (Roger Ebert).

This film is mostly about the rural living of a family who moves out of the city. The young boy, Romulo, does not know what the "big city" looks like and he uses his imagination to make his own out in the jungle. His family must deal with their decision, which sometimes brings terrible consequences. The editing and juxtaposition of images make this a true statement between what is right and wrong with the governments of Latin-America. The non-linear way of storytelling is used at it's best, which makes this film all the more interesting.

Taking his cue from the lush and complex wilderness of Peru, the director surrounds the audience with profuse and fertile images & sounds that will live in memory forever after viewing this film. Time is neither linear not static in this movie; instead events and people pass one another connected merely by the bonds of memory or sensual beauty. This award-winning film from 1972 is as evocative and mesmerizing today as ever with a story that will remain true for as long as civilization competes with the natural world. See this in 35 mm if you can and allow yourself to be surrounded by The Green Wall.