Trailer [YouTube]
Tricks. Camera angles. Light. Sound. González uses the same tricks as in his previous works. However, despite shocking the audience throughout the movie, he provides what feels like a happy ending, which seems unfitting. But in this happy-end conception lies the power of the movie. It’s a classical happy ending, and we see it as such: the American couple is safe and sound, the children were saved and the rich Japanese deaf-mute has come to terms with the shadows of her past. The subjects that focused our attention got their share of American style salvation. The heroes that we identified with are save. But what about the others?
These are not the only characters in the movie, and with, sharing equal screen time and attention, are also some “others”, the aliens with which don’t identify. The Mexican maid, at the end, loses her life in the US, and is being deported, denied legal help and doesn’t get any help from the family she raised. She goes through this accompanied by contempt and an attitude of lordship from the Americans system. The Moroccan family loses their two boys: one dead, the other on his way to prison. The Mexican cousin - his fate unknown. Here joins the Japanese girl, starring in the two categories, in the first as a rich girl with a trauma, and here as a deaf-mute in a hostile society. Yes, her Traumas are better, but for the rest of her life the role of the cripple in the Japanese society is reserved for her.
The aliens with their horrible destinies, some covered in fog, some crystal clear, are not able to ruin our feeling, that, yes, we just got another dose of American-style happy ending.The movie, and us, demanded a tragic ending, but we wanted the tragedy to belong to these that count, we wanted the tragedy to be ours. When others get it, we don’t feel it’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy, a classical one, the kind that the hero can’t escape from. The rich-western-beautiful get away, in the movie they buy their way out, just like in life. The rest, to be honest, we don’t really care about. Here lies the power of the movie, in revealing to us, that, actually, we don’t really care. And we don’t.
Links:
IMDB entry
Official movie website