After reading the novel by Rudolfo Anaya, I watched the movie and the first thing i noticed was Franklin's use of added music on the soundtrack. He uses a lot of natural sounds like crickets, birds, and flowing water along with an erie tribal music that seems to be constantly building up to something. Franklin commonly showed the landscapes of the New Mexico filming location by using extreme long shots and tracking shots with the sounds to really make the nature come alive as it does in the story with Ultima. Collectively all the diegetic sounds, nondiegetic sounds, and landscape shots combine to convey the nature theme so heavily embedded in the book. Franklin did a good job showing the power held by the moon and sun in the story by placing images of them in fade in/out transitions during important interactions between characters. For example we see the sun making the transition between a close up of Ultima's face to Antonio's in the moment where they first meet. As far as the acting I found a lot of the lines feeling unnatural and forced. Although a lot of the scenes involved children making it harder to get great acting I thought overall the acting in this film was poor. Was it effective? The main conflict in the book is Antonio's inner struggle but unfortunately the movie misses a few key features that causes this theme to get left out. For starters the film is narrated by Antonio but the issue is his voice is that of a grown mans. During the book he is only seven and is confused about all the new information he's getting which gives us that sense of struggle with identity. But with a grown up's voice it sounds like he already has everything figured out so we lose that aspect. They should have gotten a child for the voice over. Antonio was also struggling with the need for everlasting innocence and we saw some of that desire being crushed once he finds out his brother is at Rosie's. In the book this causes Antonio to question the world and himself but in the movie is reaction and thoughts are glossed over. Movies can't do everything the book does and overall I think the Franklin and his team did a good job apart from subpar acting and missing a few themes.
Mr.Sieck's Novels into Film
Mr.Sieck's Novels into Film