The last 30 years of Chilean history is a tale full of pain, sorrow, misunderstanding, intolerance, twisted economic interests and searching of ideals. In a way, this movie describes how this "story of pain" began and was developing until a horrible finale.
It's not a movie about a dictatorship by a junta, or Allende or Pinochet, or a coup whatsoever.
It's about hate. An invisible enemy that was destroying an entire country, produced mostly by foreign economic interests. All seen through the eyes of two 11 years old kids, who become friends, in spite of their opposite social status.
When I was a child (5 years old or so) I thought that was not proper to be talking about certain things. That every country had one president "elected for life" and that all communist people were terrorists, ordered by a superior chief to destroy peace, etcetera. Obviously, if you were born in a fascist world, things may appear a little mixed up when you start growing up and begin to understand that a lot of people who "protect you" are just thieves of power who think square and don't understand basic concepts such as human rights or tolerance.
So I felt a little bit of healthy envy when I saw the main characters of this film, because despite all of the political and social chaos that surround them, they know the world as it was. They were born in democracy, but they didn't took it for granted, perhaps they didn't even care. They lived their innocence, they discovered the power of friendship until everything was destroyed.
That point of the film is unbearable.
Machuca is a very good motion picture. Not in an epic way, but in a very humble insight of what happened in a little country that lost its innocence, becoming a divided nation.
Andrés Wood, the director, was a child in 1973. A tagline of the movie says "dedicated to the children of yesterday". So the film is the vision of part of the filmmaker's own life. I think a very accurate one.
9/10
It's not a movie about a dictatorship by a junta, or Allende or Pinochet, or a coup whatsoever.
It's about hate. An invisible enemy that was destroying an entire country, produced mostly by foreign economic interests. All seen through the eyes of two 11 years old kids, who become friends, in spite of their opposite social status.
When I was a child (5 years old or so) I thought that was not proper to be talking about certain things. That every country had one president "elected for life" and that all communist people were terrorists, ordered by a superior chief to destroy peace, etcetera. Obviously, if you were born in a fascist world, things may appear a little mixed up when you start growing up and begin to understand that a lot of people who "protect you" are just thieves of power who think square and don't understand basic concepts such as human rights or tolerance.
So I felt a little bit of healthy envy when I saw the main characters of this film, because despite all of the political and social chaos that surround them, they know the world as it was. They were born in democracy, but they didn't took it for granted, perhaps they didn't even care. They lived their innocence, they discovered the power of friendship until everything was destroyed.
That point of the film is unbearable.
Machuca is a very good motion picture. Not in an epic way, but in a very humble insight of what happened in a little country that lost its innocence, becoming a divided nation.
Andrés Wood, the director, was a child in 1973. A tagline of the movie says "dedicated to the children of yesterday". So the film is the vision of part of the filmmaker's own life. I think a very accurate one.
9/10