También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

Poster for También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

Autumn 2011 Features series

Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 4:00pm
Sunday, December 11, 2011 at 7:00pm

Acadia Cinema's Al Whittle Theatre
450 Main Street, Wolfville, NS

Directed by Icíar Bollaín

Screenplay by Paul Laverty

Starring Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar, and Karra Elejalde

Rated NR · 1h 43m
Spain / Mexico / France
Spanish and Quechua

View trailer

También la lluvia (Even the Rain)

In También la lluvia (Even the Rain), Bolivian director Icíar Bollaín sets up an intriguing dialogue about Spanish imperialism through incidents taking place some 500 years apart, while examining the personal belief systems of the members of a film crew headed by idealistic director Sebastian (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his producer Costa (Luis Tosar) who arrive in Bolivia to make a revisionist film about the conquest of Latin America.

Set in February and March of 2000, when real-life protests against the privatization of water rocked the nation, the film reflexively blurs the line between fiction and reality in what Variety calls “a powerful, richly layered indictment of the plight of Latin America’s dispossessed.” Carlos Aduviri is dynamic as a local who is cast as a 15th century native in the film, but when the make-up and loin cloth come off, he sails into action protesting his community’s deprivation of water at the hands of the government.

Meanwhile, Gael Garcia Bernal’s idealist film director is as relentless as Werner Herzog infamously was in making Fitzcaraldo, pushing ahead against all odds, ignoring the prevailing danger about to disrupt at any moment. Despite the devastation emerging around him, Sebastian seems unable to engage with any emotion other than a dogmatic desire to get his film done. And of course, the film also recalls themes in Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God and the film-within-a-film scenes are as brutal as any in Apocalypto.

Filmmaker, Michael Moore calls Even the Rain “a brilliant movie. At a time when the poor of the world seem to be rising up, I found myself deeply moved and completely enthralled by this film.”