Amores Perros

Amores Perros by Alejandro González Iñárritu, which was released in 2000, was a commercial and critical success both in Mexico and internationally. It became the fourth highest grossing Mexican film of all time and won an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, a BAFTA and best film awards at a host of international festivals including Cannes, Chicago, Tokyo, Sao Paolo and Moscow.

The film's director is one of a new wave of Mexican film makers that also includes Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro. ‘Los tres amigos’ as they are known have all made the transition from Mexican national cinema to Hollywood in recent years. Of the three directors, Guillermo del Toro is arguably, the best-known following his success with the Hellboy series and Pan’s Labyrinth. After making the steamy road-movie, ’Y Tú Mamá También’ in 2001, Alfonso Cuarón was offered the chance to direct the third Harry Potter movie, The Prisoner of Azkaban, which was released in 2004. The third of the trio of amigos, González Iñárritu, made the move to Hollywood in 2003 to make the edgy 21 grams and then Babel for which he won the 2006 Best Director award at the Cannes International Film Festival.

Amores Perros is an ambitious, roller-coaster of a film that touches on a broad range of themes including dogs, love, violence, sub-culture, social-class, the family in contemporary Latin American society, money and politics. The style of the film owes much to Quentin Tarantino with its use of flashbacks, parallel stories and, as one reviewer put it, “lots of people pointing and waving guns at each other”.

Structurally, the film is made up of three more-or-less true stories linked by a car crash. The dog fighting scenes, which drew heavy criticism from animal welfare organisations, come in the first story. The realism and dramatic impact of the illegal fights is due to scrupulous research on the part of the director. To ensure that the vision of the dog-fights was as accurate as possible, González Iñárritu used real people from the dog-fighting world and real fighting dogs in the film. In an interview in the Guardian (August 22, 2000) to coincide with the film’s UK release, he said:

"the dogfights are shown the way they do it, in empty swimming pools and backlots. The people can be dangerous – there are drunk people, druggie people, violent people and some of them take their children of four, five years old. But I don’t judge them. For them it’s like bullfighting or going fishing- for them it’s natural, something you do on a Saturday.”

The fights themselves are an obvious metaphor for life on the mean streets of Mexico City, where there are no rules and you have to be ruthless to survive. Just like the dogs, the characters in the film show no mercy as they fight to make their way in the harsh urban landscape that shapes their lives. No more is this the case than in the first story where the two brothers are portrayed as violent rivals for both Susana’s love and control over the family pet and champion of the dog-fighting ring, Cofi.

One of the most important themes in Amores Perros is its portrayal of fatherhood. All the main characters in the film are linked together by the absence of their fathers or their inability to assume their own parental responsibilities. This again is seen most clearly in the first section of the film, where Ramiro, whose own father obviously left the marital home some years ago, is portrayed as an unfaithful wife-beater, with little interest in his infant son. It can also be seen in the last section where after a long period of absence, the ex-revolutionary turned hit-man, El Chivo, tries to re-establish contact with his daughter, Maru. The absence of fathers is also a theme in other recent Latin America films such as The Journey by the Argentinean director, Fernando Solanas or Central Station by the Brazilian, Walter Salles.

The other issue that you might want to pick up on is the portrayal of the city. Mexico City is represented as a complex reality in which poor areas and wealthier neighbourhoods merge into one another. The film jumps backwards and forwards between these two worlds from the harsh reality of the barrios to the immaculate, but sterile homes of the rich. This juxtaposition of extreme wealth and poverty, particularly in urban centres, is a seemingly immutable feature of social reality in the developing world. Amores Perros is one of the few films that try to portray these two worlds and the relationship between them. Danny Boyle’s, Slumdog Millionaire is another.

Seumas Milne’s article in the Guardian, which I discussed in the previous post to the blog, has generated considerable reaction and debate. The most critical response has come from those who oppose Milne’s positive appraisal of Hugo Chávez and his role in reducing poverty and inequality in Venezuela.

Vanessa Neumann’s article, ‘No Chávez is not the answer to Venezuela’s poverty and inequality’, which also appeared in the Guardian, is typical of this criticism. In it, she argues that the recent reduction in poverty owes more to the oil boom than it does to Chavez’s economic and social policies. These, she argues, have had much less impact on poverty rates than Chávez claims, and have fuelled inflation and food shortages across the country.

As the articles by Milne and Neumann demonstrate, opinion about Chávez, both inside and outside the country, is extremely polarised. This is a theme addressed by the BBC’s Brian Hanrahan in a short video titled, ‘Chavez’s Revolution 10 years on’. The other key issue addressed in the film concerns the role of the poor in Venezuelan politics, which has increased significantly since Chávez came to power in 1998.

Seumas Milne

Seumas Milne’s, ‘The seeds of Latin America’s rebirth were sown in Cuba’, in Friday’s Guardian is one of the best articles on Latin America I’ve read in recent years. As the title suggests, Milne’s main argument is that the progressive political and social changes sweeping Latin America draw their inspiration from the Cuban Revolution 50 years ago. Milne also emphasises the impact that the failure of market reforms has had on radicalising politics across the region. He argues that Latin America was both the first region in the world to undergo neoliberal transformation, and the first to break away from an approach to policy-making, which is widely seen as responsible for some of the highest levels of poverty and inequality in the world.

Interestingly, Milne also raises the possibility that Latin America represents a model for what might happen in other parts of the world. Given the events in recent weeks in places as diverse as Iceland, France and Russia, where millions have protested against their governments’ handling of the financial crisis, there seems to be increasing evidence to support this view. I believe that we will see even more protests of this nature as ordinary people take to the streets to demand protection from their governments against the worst effects of the crisis.