Bless Me, Ultima

I am glad I saw the movie. It was a very nice coming of age Hispanic movie. I loved the part of Ultima who cured people but was cursed after she helped them. I kept thinking it is always that way healers get blamed after everything goes will or goes bad.

The little boy had the greatest eyes. I loved the part about the boys playing before mass and getting ready for First Communion.

Ultima is a healer who uses herbs to cure the sick, and she is also called upon to heal a young man who has been cursed by three evil sisters. Her grandson, Antonio, narrates the story throughout, and so we hear an adult voice with the visual of a little boy learning about the meaning of life from Ultima. The acting is excellent; with the two leads really carrying the movie from start to finish. The scenery of New Mexico is beautiful. The First Holy Communion in a small church brought back memories of my Catholic childhood. The doubts of Antonio are well written by someone with a logical outlook on religion. At times the movie became a bit too sentimental for my taste, but I still found it entertaining and worth recommending.

Having grown up in an environment similar to that which author Anaya describes and the movie attempts to portray, I was both elated and disappointed by the movie. Home base for me was the northern Rio Grande Valley, not the eastern N.M. *llanos* of Anaya's boyhood. I was about 7 years younger than 'tonio in the movie, so my experiences date from about 1951 forward. Things were still quite similar in N.M. back then to the earlier era that Anaya wrote about.

Of all the actors in the movie, the only one who came close to capturing a NM accent and cadence was 'tonio's father. All the others performed well, but to me they did not come across like born and bred New Mexicans. Actors pick up local accents and manners of speech all the time, but nearly all of the Hispanic actors in "Ultima" failed. It's like casting a native Baltimorean as a native of Maine--it stretches credibility. Both speak the language, but anyone from the northeast U.S. would hear the disconnect immediately.

"Bless Me Ultima" is a great story. Similar to Anaya'a family, we moved to Barelas in Albuquerque when I was in 7th grade. We rural New Mexicans of that era have all heard the *bruja* stories and are familiar with *curandera* practices. Ultimately those accounts were stories--told on late evenings when imaginations ran wild. Certainly the three sister witches in the movie added a sense of the spookiness and otherworldliness with which we all grew up, but that conceit only tangentially "gives readers a sense of the influence of indigenous cultural ways that are both authentic and distinct from the mainstream" as the book's entry in Wikipedia says.

Bless Me, Ultima Both the movie and the book expressed a wide view of different moods, details, and analysis. The book took the story one step at a time as the author, Rudolfo Anaya, progressively showed how the main character Antonio developed along with the conflicts of the novel. The book was good with a very detailed insight that made you feel as if you were a part of the book. The movie emphasized the major influences on Antonio as he becomes the age where you decide who and what you are going to be as an adult. The movie was pretty fast paced to fit the whole plot of the book into film, but it did not include the golden carp like it did in the book. This gave Antonio another religion to think about and I think this was very important to the book and the movie did not include it. Also, I like how the book goes into extreme detail to give you a perfect idea to how the story is meant to be portrayed. I liked to see each of the ways that Bless Me Ultima is expressed, but overall, the movie and the book was good.

I do not know the book. But the acting, the storytelling seems correct. And, in some measure, this is the problem because you expect more. Sure, the story is beautiful and an useful remind about significant things. Buut it remains a sketch. Yes, Miriam Colon proposes a good portrait of Ultima but she seems captive of the role. The consolations - the fly of owl and the significance in Romanian, my native language, for Ultima ( the last one ). Short, fortunatelly, correct film, unfortunately, only correct.