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filmf2007
Reviews
Once Were Warriors (1994)
Moving...
I watched "Once Were Warriors" for a film class that focuses on racial issues. No doubt we have seen some disturbing films. This one stood out from all the rest in my eyes. I found myself thinking and talking about it days after the screening. All parties involved in this film should be applauded especially Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison, and Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell. Their acting is so outstanding I forgot they were not Beth, Jake, and Grace Heke. The Director, Lee Tamahori, chooses just the right times to show the audience everything or to cut away, and in doing so makes the audience feel what is happening along with the characters. The scenes that show abuse, although hard to watch, evoke a reaction, and isn't that what a film should do? Make us laugh or cry or just feel? We can feel the Heke family's love, hate, pain, and sadness in every frame of "Once Were Warriors".
Bamboozled (2000)
Chappelle's Show...
While watching "Bamboozled", "Chappelle's Show" kept popping into my mind. When Dave Chappelle came back from Africa he explained that he walked away for his hit show because he felt like a prostitute and "socially irresponsible". The outwardly racist and stereotypical words and images that he put on the screen to be funny became funny to the wrong people. Dave was filming a sketch about a minstrel show in black face and a white person on the set started laughing at him, not with him, at him. White people were coming up to him on the street quoting lines from his sketch about a white family named The N-----'s much like in Bamboozled when white people show up to the taping of "Mantan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show" in black face calling themselves "N-----'s" and "C---'s". I think Dave Chappelle's realization parallels Pierre Delacroix's realization that instead of discrediting those racist words and images by shoving them in the face of society he was reinforcing them and making it seem OK, funny even. What surprises me is that Spike Lee pushed this idea so far he missed the fact that he too was enabling and even force feeding the racism and the stereotypes.
Interesting Side Note: Paul Mooney and Mos Def appeared in "Bamboozled" and "Chappelle's Show".
La otra conquista (1998)
Eye Opening...
There are so many lessons you can learn from "The Other Conquest". What I took away from it was the exposure of the religious hypocrisy. The Spaniards forced their religious beliefs on the Aztecs that they had not already slaughtered (even though 'You shall not murder') or killed off with disease. There was no doubt in their minds that there God was the one true God. Their sacrifices were the appropriate sacrifices. Their Virgin Mary was the correct idol to worship (even though 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.').
Since the beginning of man religion has been used for political gain, financial gain, and to control the masses. It was even used for selfish needs in the case of Henry VIII who when denied his divorce turned his back on the Catholic Church and adopted the Anglican Church making England a protestant county.
Even today we are in a war based on religious differences. We think we should impose our beliefs on others when our own county was founded by people fleeing religious persecution who then killed off the "savages" living in what is now America.
"The Other Conquest" makes you really look at Mexico's history, which as we can see parallels the history of many countries. There is a difference between reading it in a textbook and actually seeing the humanity of it on screen. We watch Topiltzin / Tomás have everything he holds dear ripped away from him. We watch Fray Diego de La Coruña force this new religion on him and yet in the end Fray Diego de La Coruña is the one whose eyes are opened along with the audience's to see that it is all the same. Yes the gods, the images, the stories, and outfits change but the root of it remains the same
Faith. What one person has faith in is no truer that what another person has faith in when there is no proof of either. What we do know is that we are all human beings who deserve the right to believe what we want to believe without fear of being killed for it; and if those doing the killing really believe "the word" as they claim they do murder would never be the answer.