Despite winning a brace of best film prizes (in San Sebastian, Denmark, Santa Margarita Legure), despite being the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Oscar in the foreign-language division, despite excellent acting (the lead actor won at San Francisco), despite a crackerjack story (by B. Traven), and despite being gorgeously photographed in black and white (by Gabriel Figueroa, no less), Macario is very disappointing. Arch allegorical stuff.
March 18, 2007 at 12:05 am
I may be one of the few people who have seen Macario in a theater (Film Forum in NYC). I agree that it’s disappointing, it never seems to be really alive (and, of course, it isn’t — its structure is a variation on Incident at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce, which was also made into a movie). It isn’t so much a film as a story on film, and the style of it made me think about half-way into it that I would have to take it as a folk-tale and not expect any of the people to be more than two dimensional (or at most 2-1/2). Nevertheless, the story, Macario’s longing for basic subsistance, for the luxury of eating a meal, was heartbreaking.