re:mote voices

Title: Machuca
Cast: Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna, Manuela Martelli, Ernesto Malbran, Aline Küppenheim, Federico Luppi, Francisco Reyes, Gabriela Medina
Director: Andrés Wood

Gonzalo Infante is a young boy at the Saint Patrick's private school in 1973, a troubled time in the history of Chile. Though for the most part the demise of President Allende and rise of General Pinochet is kept to the background. The scale that politics come into things is that the catholic priests that run the school have decided to introduce poor children into each class. Pedro Machuca is one of the children that is introduced to the school, with the racism and resentment he is met with being a microcosmic illustration of the kind of things happening in Chile at the time.

Infante may be a rich kid, but he isn't necessarily a happy one. The spoilt children in his class bully him, and use him to pass their exams. There is trouble at home, his family might be well off, but supplies are scarce, and he is conscious of black market dealings. Particularly where he is dragged along to the house of a man who sleeps with his mother in exchange for goods. So it isn't much of a leap for him to feel some sympathy for Machuca. From which the two boys become friends of a sort.

To make some money Machuca goes along to all the demonstrations that are going on, where he helps his neighbour and the neighbour's daughter sell flags to protestors. Infante joins Machuca, and from that a tentative triangle is formed between Infante, Machuca and the daughter Silvana. From this and the differences in background between the rich Infante and poor Machuca and Silvana tensions are inevitable. The fact that Chile was reaching a point of crisis serves to exacerbate these tensions. A wall that is passed several times in the film expresses the changes just as well as the increasing vehemence of protestors - at the start of the film the graphitised wall says "no civil war", further on the "no" has been scrawled out so the wall now says "civil war", then the new regime comes in and the wall has been painted grey, the voice of the people silenced.

There are strong comparisons between this Chilean film Machuca and the acclaimed Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien. Both films have a love triangle at the core, where the two male sides of the relationship come from different social strata, with the greater political tensions being a burgeoning background text. Though Y Tu Mama Tambien has a more contemporary setting, Machuca delving more into a turning point, which defined much of South America for the decades that followed. To a degree the relationship between the two boys is contrived, a convenience that serves to illustrate the big picture. Regardless it serves its purpose well enough, and given that the film was dedicated to a priest from Saint Georges, we can assume that the priest it is dedicated is a parallel to the one depicted in Saint Patricks of the film, and that similar events may well have taken place in reality.

The relationship between the three young characters is less sexualised that that in Y Tu Mama Tambien, giving it a more tentative and exploratory feel. It is also an understated aspect of the film, one which allows the characters to form a bond at the same time as we know that it will also serve to tear them apart. The politics of the film are also a little understated, which is perhaps disappointing, I didn't really get a feel for the issues involved in the story - though the depiction of rich vs. poor, capitalist vs. communist, and the racial conflicts were made abundantly clear.