¡Que Viva Mexico!

Feliz dia dos mortos! Sorry nacionalistas pau no cu, dia dos mortos no México é bem mais legal, se você não tem certeza disso, é só olhar o epílogo desse filme, que mesmo incompleto é um filmaço. DVDRip no MakingOff.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

Part documentary, part ideological projection of foreign cultural history through stylistically skilled filmmaking. Turned out to be a workable pairing, even though the ambitiosity of the project heavily outweighed the contents of the film itself.

Oddly, the fragmentary, unfinished aspects made it easier to enter into the world of the film; the parts that seemed more "complete" were kind of just boring.

Eisenstein's take on Mexico with lustrous naked women, ruthless battles in the bullring and bandits killing each other with guns and horses stomping on buried victims' heads! Quite a lot of stunning images, but how close this is to what Eisenstein had imagined for his finished product is unknown. It's rather inconsistent wannabe documentary, but you can still see an respected artist at work.

An incomplete masterpiece.

very powerful visuality plus veryo good music which also influenced western style

Similar to "I Am Cuba" both in it's message and in it's outstanding cinematography. It's a film that for it's first half feels malleable and free-form, exploring the depths of 1930s Mexican culture. It's second half is scripted and more structured like a proto-Zapata-Western (which it was supposed to become in it's final act but the funding dried up). A beautiful and inviting travelogue.

A series of drawn-out costume dramas, Busby Berkeley meets the Battleship Potemkin with Muertos dancers. Bullfight scenes and the death by horse hooves very intense.

#602

Filmed by Eisenstein i 1932 but never completed, this film is a story of Mexico and of its inhabitants. But not the complete story. Since the project was abandoned due to lack of finance, the last part of the film was never filmed. As a result the movie ends without the chapter about revolution. Which is too bad, because it seems that that was Eisensteins purpose: to depict the revolutionaries of Mexico. But in it self the film has some beautiful images and nicely composed shots.

572

Beautiful images and interesting social exploration of Mexican history. But the most surprising thing to me was how fun it was to watch. Some scenes are pretty brutal and depressing but there's an underlying sense of hope that, when combined with the wonderful soundtrack, makes the film almost constantly engaging.

Eisenstein's photography is top-notch, of course. The prologue and the epilogue are both very fine. But the two main stories of the film aren't that hot. The second goes on way too long and rarely succeeded in holding my interest. The storytelling technique is like that of a silent film, with a bare minimum of voiceover. I'm not sure whether or not Eisenstein would have wanted it that way. Still it's better to have a flawed look at what might have been rather than nothing at all.

473

# 537