In 1968, four employees of the University of Puebla decided to go mountain climbing near Puebla, a small, very poor village near the town. A lynch mob attacked them, killing two.
Those are the bare facts behind this movie, which paints a picture of a town dominated by a well-connected priest who incited his parishioners with tales of communist agitators coming to steal their animals, kill him, and raise red-and-black flags and take away G*d. It seems absurd to phrase it that way, but that seems to be what happened. Enrique Lucero portrays the priest and a monster, something that would have been unthinkable in Mexican cinema before then. Director Felipe Cazals offers a sequence of the growing hysteria and eventual violence that is absolutely unnerving, and breaks the fourth wall freely to give the audience background information. As film-making, it's brilliant. As a depiction of what actually happened.....
Those are the bare facts behind this movie, which paints a picture of a town dominated by a well-connected priest who incited his parishioners with tales of communist agitators coming to steal their animals, kill him, and raise red-and-black flags and take away G*d. It seems absurd to phrase it that way, but that seems to be what happened. Enrique Lucero portrays the priest and a monster, something that would have been unthinkable in Mexican cinema before then. Director Felipe Cazals offers a sequence of the growing hysteria and eventual violence that is absolutely unnerving, and breaks the fourth wall freely to give the audience background information. As film-making, it's brilliant. As a depiction of what actually happened.....