Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre is Cary Fukunaga’s 2009 film about illegal immigration and gang warfare in Central America. I had been meaning to watch this film because Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna are the executive producers. When I saw them speak after a screening of Rudo y Cursi (2009), they talked about how they wanted to give Mexican films a voice in the world, they want to spread the stories of their home country. 

I enjoyed this film, and I found the narrative structure to be pretty clever and interesting. Sayra (Paulina Gaitán) and her family are trying to get from their home in Guatemala to Texas, and then to find their family in New Jersey. At the same time, using D.W. Griffith’s parallel editing, the film shows Willy/El Casper (Edgar Flores) and El Smiley (Kristyan Ferrer), two brothers who are part of the gang Mara Salvatrucha. Sayra and her family, along with other hopeful immigrants, sit on top of trains that run north toward the border. El Casper and El Smiley end up on the same train as Sayra when they try to rob the immigrants, and El Casper ends up staying on. 

 

Typical Mara Salvatrucha tattoos and their hand sign

 

The train literally represents the rhythm of the plot. As it moves forward, so does the story. The story begins with Sayra and her family getting on the train, and ends soon after the main characters are no longer on the train. (I’m trying to avoid spoilers by being vague). Moments in the film when the characters are not on the train are moments in the narrative when characters are trying to find each other, pauses in the plot.

Another interesting aspect of the film is the idea of whether or not the characters will make it to America. At the beginning of the journey, Sayra’s father tells her “Not all of these people will make it,” as the camera pans the area showing probably a hundred people all getting ready to travel to Texas. The viewer wonders what types of things could happen that could prevent the characters from making it, aside from the obvious fact of getting caught by la migra or the border patrol. Of course, many of the characters don’t make it, for many different reasons.

It’s an interesting exploration of how dangerous illegal immigration can be, but it also shows how desperately people want to live somewhere with more opportunities. Many of us, myself included, take living in the United States for granted. All of the freedoms and opportunities we enjoy are not available to everyone, and people are willing to risk their lives just to live here. Perhaps this is a very obvious and cliché lesson to take away, but there’s also another layer to it.

At the beginning of the film, El Smiley is initiated into the Mara gang. The gang leader tells him, “wherever you go, you will be taken care of,” suggesting that there are Mara chapters (I’m not sure what else to call them, but I’m sure that’s the wrong word) everywhere. At first, this seems like a comforting idea. But when El Casper commits a crime against the Mara gang and tries to escape, it’s clear that because the Mara is everywhere, he will never be free. This suggests that although America is a land of freedom and opportunity, it’s not a land of sunshine and rainbows where all of your problems will disappear. As I talked about in a previous post, you take yourself with you wherever you go. You can’t run away from your problems, especially if they are gang-related.

 

El Casper sits atop the train, the beautiful cinematography shows the Mexican countryside in the background.

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Violent Island

Shutter Island (2009) finally came out, and I saw it on its opening night. I really enjoyed it, despite all the bad reviews about how it is disappointing and not Martin Scorsese’s best work. It’s certainly no Taxi Driver (1976) but I appreciate it for what it is, a good old-fashioned creepy movie with a straight narrative and a couple of twists. And of course, starring Leonardo DiCaprio. One aspect of the film that I find interesting is Scorsese’s use of violence.

Violence, both physical and psychological, is an overarching theme in almost all of Scorsese’s films. A lot of his films are just blatantly about violence itself: Mean Streets (1973), Goodfellas (1990), and The Departed (2006) — all dealing with mafia-related violence. Raging Bull (1980) is about boxing, an inherently violent sport. Taxi Driver (1976) depicts a Vietnam war veteran, a man shaped by violence and who himself commits violence. Even some of his less explicitly violent films such as The King of Comedy (1982) and After Hours (1985) deal with a lot of psychological violence (as do the physically violent films).

Shutter Island to me seems like a culmination of all of Scorsese’s ideas of violence. It has plenty of physical violence and it is probably his most literal use of psychological violence. All issues with fake Hollywood psychology aside, the film deals with mentally ill patients of a psychiatric institution. Without spoiling anything, it’s clear from the trailer that something is just not right on Shutter Island. The doctors and orderlies seem to be hiding something, and they may be using psychology itself violently. There is also another layer to this: the film itself is psychologically violent. With all the twists and gruesome detail, the viewer feels like they themselves have been a victim of psychological violence. I saw it with my friend Allison and at the end she said that she wanted to curl up under some soft blankets and cry.

Another aspect of Scorsese’s culmination of violence in this film can be seen in the dialog. Several times throughout the film, the characters discuss violence itself and seem to consider it philosophically. At the beginning, a doctor calls Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) violent, although Teddy hasn’t done anything violent to warrant such an accusation. We then see a flashback proving the doctor’s point. Teddy is confused as to how the doctor could have known this, and it raises some interesting points. Does committing violence make a person violent? Is experiencing violence enough to cause a person to be violent? Can you really tell that someone is violent just by looking at them? How much violence does someone have to commit before they are forever violent? Why tell stories of violence? There are other conversations in the film about these ideas. Also, Teddy repeats the line “I’m not here to kill anybody” many times. Although he is usually answering a question, it also seems as if he is trying to convince himself, to talk himself out of violence.

After decades of making films about violence, Scorsese finally seems to sit back and let his characters wonder what the hell all of it really means. Although nobody seems to come to any type of conclusion, I really like that he’s asking these questions.

Martin Scorsese on the set of Shutter Island

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