Um Senhor Muito Velho com as Asas Enormes

I was forced to watch this movie tonight for a class in Spanish Lit. I like the Marquez story that the movie is based on, so although I wondered how the filmmakers would turn a 7-page story into a full-length film, I hoped for the best. Unfortunately for me and a roomful of groaning students, the movie basically ignores the winged title character, and instead elaborates a few details into painfully awkward sub-plots. For example, much of the movie is about a traveling carnival, with at least three fairly hard-core sex scenes (one in the form of the lowest of low-budget 80's music videos). Maybe Marquez just didn't see potential in focusing on the carnival; he only spent half of a paragraph describing it, instead of an hour of film. This was the real problem with the film: the filmmakers hacked each interesting detail to death, instead of allowing the audience to enjoy the incongruities of the story. The small details that were charming in the story (like the girl who turned into a spider for disobeying her parents) are so thoroughly mutated that I found myself wishing Marquez had been a supremely dull author, so as not to inspire this misguided piece of trash. The actors seemed nervously aware of how awful their movie was, save a smiling boy of four or five, who was young and naive enough not to be ashamed by the movie.

The special effects were laughable--anything related to flying was filmed at an angle up towards the flier, whose unseen feet we just assumed not to be touching the ground. And if you still have any doubts, in one scene of the couple putting their child to bed, they actually used a life-sized doll instead of a baby. Q.E.D.

Let me put it this way: I hated this movie. For the first five minutes, I believed that the film was going to be interesting: During a storm, an angel washes up into two peoples backyard, and although a married couple take the angel in, the man decides to free him the next day. While the skepticism and curiosity from the neighbors would be a natural plot point, it soon turns to absolute shameless exhibitionism and cruel treatment of this supposed "divine messenger". This is only coupled with the fact that a carnival rolls into town. For well over an hour, all the viewer sees is the angel being tortured by spectators and his captors, and the gyrating "Spider-Woman". After a while, the angel is pretty much forgotten, substituted with "Spider-Woman" wiggling her hips and huge mob scenes. The last five minutes of the film, between the son and the angel is like the beginning: decent. However, the 80-90 minutes in between is pure trash, and I'm angry that I wasted two hours of my life on this film.

If this film is trying to say that there is no redemption in humanity, then it got its point across. While the angel manages to escape, I felt like there should have been some kind of retribution against these thoughtless, backwoods idiots.

With the angel being freed from his captors, so was I from this movie. I felt like I was being tortured right along with him, and was relieved when it ended.

Although there is admittedly a non-Hollywood flavor to this movie--a cultural difference that will not be to everyone's taste--it's pretty faithful to Marquez's short story. Many of my students who read the story become nearly hostile about its cryptic, impenetrable refusal to make "logical" sense. The human characters behave abysmally; the angel is unreadable and ultimately undefined; the story is not so much a story as a long comment.

It has been said that the angel is actually a mask for Marquez himself. In that regard, this film is a fine reminder of the author's own resistance to categorization.

Although Marquez was involved in the production of this cinematic adaptation of his story, this is a work of Birri, which all the other reviewers on this board seem to miss. Of the harsh reviews of this film posted, only one of them actually sees the film for what it is, and they hate it for being what it is: a critique of imperialism via an experimental visual narrative.

If you're looking to teach your short story via this piece, you will fail and end up a frustrated lazy professor, and if you're looking for Hollywood mediocrity jacked up with special effects, go watch a Marvel movie, but if you want a story that will surprise you and question your views and ways of seeing, then you will find it here.

What would you do if you found a sick, decrepit angel in your backyard? "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" comments on faith and doubt as it explores the arrival of a winged old man who washes ashore into the lives of Pelayo and Elisenda. They put him first into a chicken coop(because of his wings), then on display and charge admission for the townspeople to see him. A doubting priest provides comic relief and pokes fun at the not easily convinced Catholic Church. The soundtrack is excellent. All fans of Garcia Marquez must not go another minute without seeing this movie.