BATALLA EN EL CIELO (BATTLE IN HEAVEN)

Mexico, 2005, 98 minutes, Colour.
Marcos Hernandez, Anapola Mushkadiz, Bertha Ruiz, David Bornstein.
Directed by Carlos Reygadas.

It might be useful to ask the reasons for the resounding ovation at the end of the screening. Enthusiastic and supportive Mexicans? An insightful portrait of contemporary Mexico City? A stylish piece of cinema? Or, more than perhaps, that the director was extending boundaries in depictions of up-front, in-your-face sexual sequences? Maybe, all of the above.

Similar issues were explored in the cinematically austere Sangre – and to clearer and more involving effect. Here we have another middle aged male sleepwalking through life, almost unfazed as the baby he and his wife have kidnapped dies, as he has sex with the daughter of the general he chauffeurs who works in a bordello. And why the sudden violence towards a woman he declares he loves? Mad passion? Is it that ‘we kill the thing we love the most? Is this a particularly Latin perspective on life that eludes more sanguine cultures? Again, maybe, all of the above.

What is particularly Latin is what the director describes as Mexicans’ religion as not being spirituality but ritual. This comes to the fore when the central character assumes the role of penitent as he goes on his knees in pilgrimage to the cathedral of Nuestra Signora de Guadalupe: sin, sacrifice, repentance, redemption.

Shot in a cinema verite style, with long takes observing the passing parade as well as the intimacies of the central characters, the film keeps us dispassionate about passion.

1.The acclaim for the film? The denunciations of the film? Merited?

2.Carlos Reygadas and his career, Japon and its blend of realism and mysticism? Stellet Licht and its portrait of Mexican Mennonites, the Mexican countryside, mysticism, moral issues? This film in this context?

3.The title and its meaning? In relationship to Marcos and his world, Marcos’s wife? Ana?

4.The visual style of the film, the drained colour photography? Mexico City and its detail? The focus on individuals? The grim and grimy aspects? Affluent life? The build-up to the pilgrimage of Our Lady of Guadalupe? The square, the basilica? The musical score?

5.The notoriety of the opening, explicit sexual material? The visual impact? Emotional impact? Moral impact? Marcos, his relationship with Ana? Leading into the characterisations, the themes?

6.The character of Marcos, his appearance, weight, age? His role as a chauffeur? The relationship with Ana, her prostituting herself? His work? His relationship with his wife? Betrayal? Love for his wife? Their selling goods in the underpass? Their interaction with people? Honesty and dishonesty? The idea of abducting the baby? The facts, the taking of the baby, the caring for it, the hope for money? Their dilemmas, the fate of the baby?

7.How well did the film delineate the characters, their moral stances – and the amorality of Mexican life?

8.Ana, her background, her father? Government, military? The rich? The treatment of their servants, the chauffeurs? Ana and her rebellion? Leaving the family, her way of life, sexuality?

9.The background of Mexican life? Gaps between rich and poor? The traffic jams, people’s behaviour? The soccer?

10.The religious background of the film? The Catholicism? Catholicism as an ideology? As a religion? A spirituality? God’s continual help, no matter what?

11.The pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadalupe, the visuals of the pilgrims, the square, the basilica, the statue? Audience knowledge of the history of the apparitions? Devotion to Mary in Mexico?

12.The resolution of the film? Marcos and his wife? Their fate? Ana and her future? An interim picture of Mexican life in Mexico City at the beginning of the 21st century?