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Reviews
Bless Me, Ultima (2012)
Bless Me, Ultima Review Period 2
In the film version of Bless Me, Ultima, Franklin seems to be most heavily influenced by the culture aspect of the book. This is achieved through a native-cultured sounding soundtrack and recurring shots of nature, which are often used as transitions between certain scenes. Franklin captures the innocence and curiosity of Antonio effectively by using many subjective shots throughout the film, which show Antonio's reaction to almost anything happening. This ranges from Lupito's death to simply his reaction of people in the town's market. In nearly every subjective shot, Antonio has the same facial expression that looks as if he is questioning everything he is seeing, and doesn't know what to make of it. However, in return, this leaves Antonio with one main emotion throughout the film (curiosity), which makes his character a tad stale, because his emotions are very rarely clearly explained. This also makes Antonio seem like he's not the main character, as he rarely talks and just listens and follows whoever he is with, unless he is with his friends. The prominence of Religion is captured well by Franklin by keeping Maria's authentic character in the film where she corrects bad behavior and often speaks of God and the Virgin Mary, and by using a strict priest who gives physical punishment and stresses the threat of Hell. Franklin also struggled with transitioning through time smoothly. It was hard to tell how much time was passing between each scene and the movie as a whole, due to the sudden cuts between night and day, and sometimes lack of context clues. In the book, the reader was able to detect that Antonio was slowly starting to think for himself and grow as a person. The film is ineffective at displaying this growth due to showing how Antonio is pondering a situation but not clearly showing how he feels. This remains true throughout the whole film, which leaves the most important character of the story stale and un-dynamic surrounded by characters of less importance that are clearly dynamic.