Even the Rain: A Confluence of Cinematic and Historical Temporalities
Fabrizio Cilento
Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Volume 16, 2012, pp. 245-258 (Article)
Published by University of Arizona DOI: 10.1353/hcs.2012.0035
For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hcs/summary/v016/16.cilento.html
Access provided by University of Washington @ Seattle (19 Oct 2013 16:47 GMT) Even the Rain: A Confluence of Cinematic and Historical Temporalities
Fabrizio Cilento is Assis- ven the Rain (Icíar Bollaín, 2010) takes a metacin- tant Professor of Film and ematic approach to the story of a Mexican film crew Digital Media at Messiah in Bolivia shooting an historic drama on Christopher College (PA). His scholarship E Columbus’s conquest. With the water rights riots in Bolivia focuses on films whose main characteristic lies in recon- as a background, Bollaín uses different cinematic styles to structing historical events, establish disturbing parallels between old European im- mainly political crises and perialism, the recent waves of corporate exploitation, and conspiracies. Cilento received on the individual scale, the exploitation of Bolivian actors his PhD in Comparative Lit- for the benefit of the global film industry. The film within erature from the University a film device furnishes some insights on the dynamics and of Washington in 2010. His pressures that crews face when developing a socially engaged recent article “Saviano, Gar- rone, Gomorrah: Neorealism film. Bollaín warns that these productions can fall into a and Noir in the Land of the colonialist dynamic by reproducing the imbalances between Camorra” appeared in the the ‘visible’ countries in the global film market, and ‘invisible’ Global Noir issue of Fast countries whose native actors and visually appealing locations Capitalism. are exploited. Even the Rain blends several cinematic tenden- cies, which at times clash to create a temporal short circuit. One is the visually stunning historic drama reminiscent of Hollywood epics. Another is the documentary-style shooting of Cochabamba’s urban guerrilla crisis, in which the heritage of the 1960s new waves of Latin American cinema clearly emerges. The sequences showing the film crew shooting the historic drama on Columbus at times clash with the other temporalities, and these moments are effective in reinforcing the claim that cinema should maintain a dual role of witness Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 16, 2012 246 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies on contemporary abuses and preservation but together form an articulated critique of of memory. colonialism, made possible thanks to the The main characters ofEven the Rain, application of different stylistic approaches director Sebastián and executive producer to the cinematic medium. The metacin- Costa, find the production of their film put ematic narrative and the Cochabamba riot into question with the abrupt intrusion of sequences evoke the season of sociopolitical anti-government protests in Cochabamba documentaries of the 1960s and 1970s, in 2000 following the sale of Bolivia’s characterized by the use of location shoot- water rights to a private multinational ings, a mix of professional and non-profes- consortium. As Sebastián and Costa work sional actors, natural lighting, hand held at re-enacting the Spanish imperialistic cameras, and a degree of improvisation in ideals of Columbus’s age, they are chal- the dialogues. The intimate quality of some lenged by the native actor-activist Daniel sequences in Even the Rain, the presence of (Juan Carlos Aduviri) to wrestle with the actor Gael García Bernal, the psychological parallels between their film and the current development, and the character-driven plot water issues faced by the Bolivian people. suggest a link to the New Waves of Latin While Sebastián refuses to take action, American Cinema of the 1990s, which typi- Costa will overcome his initial cynicism and cally offer emotionally charged narratives in understand that in the new millennium, realistic settings (Schroeder Rodríguez 33). water is the new gold. Differently from The multi-layered hybrid style ofEven the documentaries Blue Gold: World Water the Rain brings Latin American Cinema Wars (Sam Bozzo, 2008), The Corporation into the new millennium, thanks to its (Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar, 2003), extreme self-reflexivity. I explore how such and even the animation Abuela Grillo (De- self-awareness is functional for Even the nis Chapon, 2009), Bollaín’s approach to Rain to locate itself ideologically in antith- the subject of water rights refrains from esis to the frozen nostalgia of Hollywood pedagogic approaches in favor of a more films depicting the conquest of the Ameri- poetic and evocative narrative. Even the cas, particularly those made for the 500th Rain does put in evidence that in order for anniversary of Columbus’s arrival. Instead, water to remain a public trust, an active lo- Bollaín’s rich and textured aesthetic style cal government will have to collaborate with reflects her unique perspective as a Span- local citizens. However, this is suggested via ish director working on an international an imaginative rather than a prescriptive co-production in Bolivia. While the film attitude, using powerful storytelling and addresses the contemporary issues of the the application of conceptual histories and role of the local government in the Bolivian temporalities. crisis, issues of infrastructure, and current Bollaín’s film emphasizes the conti- assumptions about what is ethical regarding nuity of colonialism in its different forms access to water, the innovative aspect of the throughout the centuries. She does this film is in Bollaín’s vision of Latin American while engaging with the changing styles of histories (the late 15th and early 16th cen- regional Latin American cinema over dif- tury as well as the recent guerra del agua) ferent periods. In other words, the history in its evocation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s of colonialism and the history of Latin “eternal return” and the anguishing scenario American cinema are not separate histories, a demon presents to humanity: Fabrizio Cilento 247
This life as you now live it and have logically progressing toward a climax, the lived it, you will have to live once narrative time of Even the Rain is circular— more and innumerable times more; the story of colonialism loops like a snake and there will be nothing new in it, devouring its own tail/tale. Even the Rain’s but every pain, every joy and every addictive promise is that it may reveal the thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your motivations and the causes of colonialism, life will have to return to you…. which generates the desire to re-watch and The eternal hourglass of existence analyze the film, although the answer will is turned upside down again and always remain beyond it. again, and you with it, speck of dust! Even the Rain’s complex narrative (273-74). structure is based on several different lay- ers that relay the main events of the film Nietzsche’s notion of history assumes (Santaolalla 215). Here, I construct upon considerable importance in Bollaín’s film. those layers, moving from those that are Even the Rain considers the cyclical recur- closer to the actual Cochabamba events that rence of exploitation in the poorest Latin form the film’s true historical background, American nations, from colonialism to the to the fictional ones. Bollaín distinguishes more sophisticated neocolonialism of late between what events count as historical capitalism; represented not only by multina- and truthful, and which are imaginary tional corporations but also in international and mythical, or just erroneous accounts. film productions. The film’s characters are However, is important to keep in mind entrapped in a Nietzschean dimension for that each category is not to be considered most of the film, doomed to the eternal a separate box. Rather, “history is an open failure of something that will always remain ended process rather than a closed science the same and will never change. However, if and a fatality” (White xiiii). In Even the the film faces absolute nihilism, it ultimately Rain, the temporalities are deeply porous. does not fall into it. As mentioned above, I pay particular attention to the confluence Costa does not stoically accept yet another of temporalities; those moments in which cycle of colonial invasion but begins to they overlap, creating short circuits through comprehend the native’s point of view. which the film most effectively faces the Even the Rain includes some visual questions related to colonialism (what went samplings of a recent historical event, the wrong) and neocolonialism (what is wrong). Cochabamba riots, that needs to be re- peated, retold, and reframed in an endless hermeneutic process over a decade later, and The Use of TV that in turn evokes the specter of Colum- and Radio Newsreel bus in an endless game of mirrors. When colonialism is replayed via the Cochabamba Even the Rain incorporates actual television affair, this implies a perspective from which footage and radio newsreel of the Coch- historical events appear without the mitigat- abamba riots in several scenes where the di- ing circumstances of their transitory nature. rector and producer watch and comment on If the classic cinematic time of a historic the news. These raw documents establish the drama can be geometrically imagined as a simultaneity between the narrative of the straight line composed of scenes chrono- crew shooting the Columbus film and the 248 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
Cochabamba riots, setting the present tense the privatization process and forced Bechtel of Even the Rain around the year 2000. As out of the country. the film’s characters learn about the events It is significant that Sebastián and taking place through the actual footage, the Costa learn about these dramatic events via film’s international audiences may also learn the media rather than through the locals about the Bolivian water crisis at the turn with whom they are working. In effect, of the millennium. the television and radio sequences establish Several years ago Bolivia sold its water Sebastián and Costa as outside observers of system and rights to Bechtel’s subsidy Aguas the crisis. Their immediate concern is solely de Tunari, a consortium of corporations about their ability to continue shooting the led by International Water Limited, which film. Their lead actor, Daniel, is actively in- resulted in a 300% rise in consumer charges. volved in the riots, and they worry about the The tariffs were devastating to the people of possibility of his being arrested or injured by Cochabamba, where the minimum wage the police, as it would cause delays in their was less than US $100 per month. Many production timeline. people found themselves spending one-third of their income on water. Popular resistance Behind the Scenes was harsh in Cochabamba, and the guerra of the Historic Columbus del agua broke out in one of the country’s largest cities, lasting for several months.1 Drama Bolivia faced the paradox of having its people prohibited from collecting their own This subplot focuses on the apparently water (inspiration for the title of Bollaín’s minor character of María (Cassandra film), while its politicians used the military Ciangherotti), a filmmaker whose task is to and police forces to protect the interests of shoot a “making of” documentary about the foreign investors. historic Columbus drama. However, María soon reveals herself to be more perceptive Water privatization came to Bolivia than Sebastián and Costa, feeling an instinc- as a theory, on the wings of foreign tive empathy toward the exploited Boliv- coercion. The World Bank officials ians. Her character problematizes the issue who pushed the plan to bring in of where to look. Should she focus on the multinational corporations proclaim film’s representation of the colonialist past that it would deliver three things that and furnish insights about the upcoming impoverished countries desperately cinematic work whose goal is to expose the needed—strong managers, skilled brutality of the conquest of the Americas, technical experts, and investment in which involved the massacre of Native expansion service…In Cochabamba, Americans in the search for gold and other however, the theory didn’t work out quite the way its proponents said it natural resources? Or rather, should she would. (Shultz and Draper 39-40) turn her lightweight digital camera toward the popular rebellion against the privatiza- During the riots, more than a hundred tion of water in Cochabamba, displaying people were injured, many were detained, her engagement in the fashion of Latin and a teenager died after being shot by the American documentaries such as Battle of Army.2 In the end, the government reversed Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1975-1979), and Fabrizio Cilento 249 in doing so create an “alliance between cul- find a cinematic rhetoric capable of repre- tural politics and social history” (Pick 4)?3 senting different and even opposing political María’s sequences are easy to distinguish contexts, not as a priori principles but as a from the rest of Even the Rain, since images dialogical exchange. In doing so, through produced by her digital camera are grainy, the use of non-chronological and elliptical occasionally appearing in black and white. temporalities, she pragmatically combines This seems to suggest that the lightweight, militant documentary footage with global economical digital technology may revitalize images of television in order to deliver her the 1960s and 1970s idea of cinema as an anti-colonialist argument through an in- instrument of critical and ideological aware- novative aesthetic. ness. Again, her impulse to shoot footage of In “For an Imperfect Cinema” (1969) the guerra del agua makes the point that it Cuban director Julio García Espinosa is not enough make a film denouncing the declares that ideas of quality have been effects of colonialism in the distant past, but contaminated by Europeanized values and to also recognize that the Cochabamba riots that questions of taste need to be reexam- are a repetition of that very history that has ined: “The only thing Imperfect Cinema is been continuing for centuries. interested in is how an artist responds to The behind-the-scene sections of the following question: what are you do- Even the Rain reveal Bollaín’s familiarity ing in order to overcome the barrier of the with Latin American cinematic histories. ‘cultured’ elite audience which up to now In the 1960s and 1970s Latin American has conditioned the form of your work?” directors expressed the need for a cultural (82). Even the Rain is a moral tale about decolonization both from Hollywood im- the divisions within the region and between perialism (First Cinema) and European Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, auteurist cinema (Second Cinema). In or- and how to possibly overcome them. When der to understand how Even the Rain deals it comes to the divisions within the region, with this heritage, it is worth mentioning is worth remembering that the film opens two important manifestos. In “Towards a
Third Cinema” (1971) directors Fernando with an endless line of Bolivian actors and Solanas and Octavio Getino stress the need technicians willing to wait for hours in or- for cinema to “examine the causes, to inves- der to audition for a Mexican director. In tigate the ways of organizing and arming recent years Mexico has established itself as for the change,” also recognizing that “our a source of contemporary art films and as a time is one of hypothesis rather than of major market for distributors. In contrast, thesis” (56-57). This statement applies to Bolivia never had a film industry and only Bollaín’s approach to issues of gold, water, produces a few sporadic films every year, and underdevelopment. There is no doubt most of them shot with low budgets. Only that Even the Rain is against colonialism in the last two decades has there been a and neo-colonialism, thus in general agree- modest but significant professionalization of ment with these manifestos. However, the the industry, possible thanks to the declin- film also intends to generate self-awareness ing costs of digital technology (Crespo).4 on how these histories have been mediated Thus, from a Bolivian point of view, the rather than to impose a political thesis or flourishing Mexican film industry, together solution. Bollaín is concerned with trying to with that of Argentina and Brazil, comprises 250 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies a new sort of elite. The Bolivian actors S: Yes, it’s always money, always. In waiting for a Mexican director is a refer- this case very little money, right? ence to the fact that some Bolivian movies, Right, you miserable cheapskate? especially Juan Carlos Valdivia’s films, have C: If we’d filmed in English, we’d have double the money, and relied heavily on Mexican funding and they double the audience. Almost had typically have Mexican actors as part of the the deal done till you fucked it conditions for funding. Bollaín illuminates up. the gap in understanding on the part of S: Because Spaniards speak Spanish. the Spanish and Mexicans regarding other What if we’d done it in English? Latin American cultures. For example, when C: We’d been fucking smart. Costa and Sebastián arrive in Cochabamba, M: So, the Spaniards speak Spanish, María interviews them and a revealing dia- and the Tainos that Columbus logue takes place about the film’s historical found speak Quechua? accuracy, and its relative insignificance to the producer when it comes to the use of María’s task in creating the behind the indigenous people in the film. scenes documentary is to implicitly request that subjects break from self-consciousness M: We’re in Bolivia, it doesn’t make when the digital camera is pointed at them, much sense. 7,500 feet above sea not worrying about how they come across. level, surrounded by mountains, Instead, both Costa and Sebastián are and thousands of miles from the uneasy when challenged by her questions. Caribbean. Although they are professionals in the visual S: Well, Costa thinks Columbus lan- culture realm, in terms of appearing on cam- ded by parachute. era they are rank amateurs. In this and other C: Costa knows this place is full of sequences there is an evident lack of com- starving Indians, and this means plicity with María, and throughout Even the thousands of extras. None of Rain she is often censored and interrupted that digital shit. I want scale, all by her colleagues. When María points out the money up on the screen. S: So sloppy! Have you seen their how Sebastián is imposing an artificially faces? They’re Quechua. constructed identity on the Indians, while C: So? maintaining cultural identity by shooting S: They’re from the Andes! What’s the film in Spanish, she implicates him of Columbus doing with Indians imposing a white view of Latin America from the Andes? on the film. Furthermore, Costa’s views C: Look, they’re Indians. That’s what were completely removed from a cultural you wanted? sensibility, as he wanted to shoot the film S: No, no… in English, since his interests lie solely on C: Give me a fucking break, they’re the financial prospects of the film. all the same. These dynamics are not unusual, and S: [Gesture for María to stop her filming] after Espinosa’s essay, when an auteur such C: You can negotiate things here. as Bollaín traverses the familiar territory of Hotels, transport, catering… colonialism, one may question why Euro- whatever. peans, rather than Latin Americans, should M: So, it’s about money. make yet another film on colonialism. Fabrizio Cilento 251
There is no doubt that co-productions can and the values of Sebastián and Costa are easily become sites of cultural misunder- questioned by and coexist with that of a standings and generalizations rather than fledgling digital documentarian. Bollaín’s ethnographic expeditions of discovery. work is not a straightforward defense of Cinematographies from different continents indigenous cultures, but a film about how have at times successfully appropriated each arduous is to articulate such a defense. Her other’s languages for their own political first demand is that Even the Rain simulta- and economic purposes. As Mike Wayne neously keeps track of the local and global remarks in Political Film: “We can have First contexts, of the underground relationships and Second Cinema in the Third World that connect the different and multiply im- 5 and Third Cinema in the First World” (6). plicated geographical cultures. The result of Although production practices and textual this imaginary project is the rupture of the strategies vary, the divisions within the three stark divisions between the three cinemas, cinemas have historically been porous, and toward a hybridized and nomadic aesthetic this process of hybridization accelerated that may better fit both the intellectual and after 1989. Due to the effects of a global- practical needs of the post-globalization era. ized economy, the transnationalization of culture, and political exchanges, Spanish and Portuguese producers and filmmakers The Film Crew Shooting often cross the Atlantic, at times recasting the Historic Drama the tradition of Third Cinema.Even the Rain on Columbus itself is a co-production of Spain, France and Mexico that establishes both a new The casting of Bernal in the role of Sebas- cultural awareness and artistic standards. Its tián problematizes his stardom in the film strength is in constantly interrogating how the global-local relationship is conditioning as an ambitious director so absorbed by the outcome and the flow of ideas and how his cinematic masterpiece that he becomes are the new modes of production are trans- blind to the second invasion of globaliza- forming national and regional subjectivities tion that is happening in front of his eyes. (Alvaray 55-56).6 Bollaín seems convinced Since the early 2000s Bernal has become the that it is not necessary that only a person face of the so-called New Latin American who belongs to a specific ethnic group can Cinema thanks to works such as Y tu mamá deliver a statement about that group’s his- también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001), Amores tory and struggle. A movie is not solely an Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2001) expression of the director, but inevitably in- and The Crime of Father Amaro (Carlos volves the contribution of multiple figures. Carrera, 2002). He also famously played a In this sense, María is a key figure because young Ernesto Che Guevara in The Motor- she constantly interrupts our identification cycle Diaries (2004). At the same time, he process and, more importantly, begins to appeared in Nike Football: Write the Future locate her gaze on the local Bolivians. (Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu, 2010) and Having said this, it is easier to un- the Levi’s commercial French Dictionary derstand the quasi-obsessive self-reflexivity (Ivan Zacharias, 2003). While in his youth that characterizes Even the Rain, a pris- he often criticized the US film industry for matic aesthetic in which the point of view stereotyping Latin American characters, he 252 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies has recently appeared in Hollywood roman- the Rain risks subverting its own good will. tic comedies such as Letters to Juliet (Gary You can’t help but wonder to what degree Winick, 2010) and A Little Bit of Heaven its makers exploited the extras recruited to (Nicole Kassell, 2011), play 16th-century Indians. Inevitably Even The cultural politics of Bernal’s the Rain is trapped inside its own hall of stardom, in which idealism, rebellion and mirrors” (Holden). Such remarks beg the commerce coexist, brings to mind Jean-Luc question of whether the metacinematic Godard’s formula “children of Marx and strategy of showing a crew shooting a film Coca Cola” (Masculin, feminin, 1966). This on Columbus, which brings within itself a contradiction emerges in the film with an high degree of self-reflexivity, may be suf- exchange Sebastián has with the prefect of ficient to justify the ethics of the project. Or Cochambaba, who has deals in place with is Even the Rain entangled in the spiral of the multinational capital: exploitation that it describes, as Ebert and Holden suggest? It would be unfair not to P: In this globalized world the Indians recognize that Bollaín is one of the few di- burn water bills and hurl rocks rectors to drop the guise of innocence and to at the police. It’s the cult of victim confront us with the issue of the cinematic versus modernity. exploitation of regional and international S: I don’t want to be rude but if some production in Latin American countries. one earns two dollars a day, he These are too often overlooked in the name can’t pay a 300% increase in the price of water. At least that’s what of the contents movies intend to deliver. The I am told. debate reminds me of the remarks Jean Bau- P: How curious…that’s what I’m told drillard made in Simulacra and Simulations you pay the extras. regarding Francis Ford Coppola’s anti-war S: Yes, but we are on a very tight colossal Apocalypse Now (1979), shot in the budget. Philippines for its access to military equip- P: Aren’t we all? ment and cheap labor:
The socially engaged Sebastián is entangled Coppola does nothing but that: at the moment in which he agrees to work test cinema’s power of intervention, for the global industry. He is being pres- test the impact of a cinema that has sured by his producers to adhere to the bud- become an immensurable machinery get, requiring him to justify his exploitation of special effects. In this sense, his of the local actors by rationalizing that it is film is really the extension of war through other means, the pinnacle for a noble cause, that is, to denounce old of this failed war, and its apotheosis. colonialism. The war became the film, the film Some critics such as Stephen Holden becomes the war, and the two are and Roger Ebert have insinuated that Bol- jointed into their common hemor- laín herself may have underpaid her own rhage into technology (59). extras. “The movie is brave to raise the questions it does, although at the end I Paraphrasing Baudrillard, a pessimist may looked in vain for a credit saying, ‘No ex- say that Bollaín points out that colonialism tras were underpaid in the making of this and neocolonialism became the object of film’” (Ebert). “Consciously or not, Even numerous Latin American films, and that Fabrizio Cilento 253 in turn Latin American films contribute to Until his change of heart, Costa is the most neocolonial exploitation. However, to have unforgiving and exploitative character, and effectively emphasized this dynamic is not one would expect another, more sympa- a small achievement, especially because thetic member of the crew such as María or in doing so, Bollaín problematizes the Sebastaín to be the one to step in and help. triumphalist pan-Latin American rhetoric, This apparently happy ending may be an- whose climax, cinematically speaking, was other choice that Bollaín made to imply the the famous farewell monologue to Peru continuity of colonialism through Costa. delivered by Bernal as Che Guevara in Mo- torcycle Diaries: Scenes from the Historic Drama on Columbus We believe that...the division of America into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are The most visually appealing parts of the one single mestizo race from Mexico film portray the beautiful Bolivian land- to the Magellan Straits. And so, in scapes as the setting for the first encounter an attempt to free ourselves from between Columbus and the Native Ameri- narrow-minded provincialism, I cans. The Columbus film in Even the Rain propose a toast to Peru and to a is a soaring epic period film that visually United America. resembles a Hollywood style production, while its contents are deeply anti-colonialist. At the end of Even the Rain this idea is not Around the time of the 500th anniversary denied, but reaffirmed. However, while the of Columbus’s arrival, Hollywood directors Mexican Sebastián remains self-absorbed, revisited episodes of the colonialist history, the Spanish producer Costa has a crisis of exploring the first wave of globalization conscience and risks his own life in order to depicting the exploitation of American soil save the young daughter of the native actor and the massacre of its natives (Haddu, Daniel. In order to express his gratitude, 157). These works were typically character- Daniel gives him a present, and in the final ized by huge sets, casts of thousands and moment of the film we find out that it was spectacular battle scenes, such as in Ridley a little ampulla of water, the most precious Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), thing in Bolivia. So, the brotherhood and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (John mutual understanding evoked by Guevara Glen, 1992), and Michael Mann’s The Last and the spirit of the speech quoted above of the Mohicans (1992), followed by the is ultimately reinforced in this episode of more recent and visionary work of Ter- transcontinental understanding. Bollaín rence Malick in The New World (2005). suggests that without self-consciousness no In these works, it is implied that directors ethical affirmation is possible.7 However, are dealing with an event from the distant this understanding as presented in the film past that is completely removed from the may be too simplistic. Costa’s change of contemporary socio-political situation. In heart happens abruptly and unexpectedly this sense, despite the alleged realism, even at the end of the film, and we now have a the most brutal sequences of torture, rape narrative of the natives reliant upon a Eu- and mass murders are just a sad spectacle, ropean savior’s intervention to save them. and figures such as Columbus become an 254 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies animation coming from the pages of a dusty colonialism as past history, closes his eye to history book, and thus dead in advance.8 In its manifestation in the present, as toward the polished images of Hollywood films, the end of the film he pleads with Costa to dramatic episodes of European colonialism move the production to a safer location away assume an aura of nostalgia. from the riots: “This confrontation will end This nostalgic feeling goes along with and it will be forgotten. But our film is go- Malick’s lament for the loss of the noble ing to last forever.” Even the Rain does not savage in The New World, in which America’s juxtapose good and evil in a Manichean way, colonial history frames the Pocahontas-John rather it blends and confuses them, requiring Smith story. Interior monologues and an an active spectatorship that asks audiences to emphasis on animals and nature support arrive at their own position on the morality the belief in a golden age in which natives of the crew. were living according to benign values.9 The The historic drama sequences of Even film poses questions such as: why are we the Rain are indebted, visually speaking, not born into the world and part of the world, only to the Hollywood films on colonialism while at the same time feeling that we have mentioned above, but also to the ground- been exiled from it? Why doesn’t the world’s breaking The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986) beauty prevent us from suffering? and El Dorado (Carlos Saura, 1988) and La The first to idealize the simple life of the otra conquista (Salvador Carrasco, 1998). indigenous Americans is the Dominican friar The postcolonial position of the latter films Bartolomé de las Casas in his Short Account of is closer to that of Bollaín, since they engage the Destruction of the Indies (1552), in which with critique of dominant historical repre- he praises their simple manners and inability sentation and reestablish a sense of Latin to tell a lie. In Even the Rain, Bollaín creates American identity on screen. In addition, a distancing effect when she includes the in several sequences they portray the ways Dominican friar’s character in the Columbus European conquerors misbehaved. However, film, reciting his lines at a dinner for the the film within the film expedient allows Bol- crew in which everyone is drunk. These lines laín to unapologetically display the horrors of denouncing the suffering of the indigenous colonialism with an extreme self-awareness, people are recited mechanically, and emptied giving her film the additional value of linking of their original meaning. In effect, the crew old colonialism to the present. cannot see the continuity of colonialism, and The ethical tension ofEven the Rain cli- the injustices they depict in their own movie maxes when the events portrayed in the his- are still occurring in different forms even as toric drama sequences are shocking enough they enjoy their dinner. This sequence is an to the native non-professional actresses that example of how Bollaín creates a clash be- they refuse to reenact them for Sebastián. In tween the two main temporalities of the film, particular, they refuse to drown their babies, distant past and present, in order to construct even if they are just dolls, since to them it is the argument that it is not enough to film an act too brutal to be represented at all. The Columbus in a negative light in antithesis to Bolivian women refuse to use water as an Hollywood, but it is important to make the agent of death and as such form a resistance connection that the history of colonialism to the director’s will. In a parallel scene earlier continues today. Sebastián, while fully com- in the film, there is a group of women fight- mitted to showing the devastating effects of ing Bechtel employees and the local police Fabrizio Cilento 255 force against the appropriation of a well they enous women risks appropriating their own had dug themselves, claiming they needed voices. Bollaín shows that Bolivian women to do so in order for their children to drink. are hardly heard or recognized within the There is a clear association here between the current global cinematic industry. Never- colonialist and neo-colonialist temporalities theless she does not deny their capacity for and so the fictional drama generates a link social change, as their resistance is able to between the film industry and corporate temporarily block the entire shooting of the capitalism. While the ambitious Sebastián Columbus film. Because of them, the drown- wishes to portray an episode of children’s ing sequence will never be shot, at least not mass murder in the name of historical ac- in the way Sebastián imagined. curacy, Bechtel puts children’s lives at risk In any case, it cannot be a coincidence via the mismanagement of a natural resource. that the historic drama sequences are a Bollaín shows that women are the compilation of various brutalities. A critic new source of cheap labor and exploitation may still wonder if Even the Rain itself is by multinational corporations expanding in entangled in the contradiction of displaying developing countries. At the same time, the violence with the excuse of self-awareness. Columbus film being an international co- This self-awareness is not a limitation, but production, and thus part of a corporate cul- rather a vital contradiction, and violent/ ture, there is a risk that educated postcolonial controversial images need to be shown to directors such as Sebastián began speaking represent the consequences of colonialism. instead of disempowered indigenous groups. Sebastián pushes the violent exploitation In turn, Bollaín is skeptical of any attempt pedal, but since we know the behind the (including her own) to portray the lives of scenes story thanks to documentarian María, the Bolivian women. Thus, she located the we are aware that his honest depiction of co- agency of change in the insurgent women lonialism is yet another form of exploitation, themselves rather than in the engagement partly motivated by narcissism. of non-native authoritative directors. The The violence climaxes in the scene in drowning sequence also serves to raise some which the Indians who refuse to convert are questions related to the anti-colonialist films tied to crosses and burned alive. At the end of which Even the Rain itself is an integral of the sequence, the police arrive to arrest part. How far can an anti-colonialist film go Daniel. At this point the film’s intertwined with the violent exploitation of native bodies temporalities are fully manifested, since the before becoming a cinematic spectacle itself? leader of the insubordinate Indians in 1492 Has there been an escalation of violence in is also one of the leaders of the guerra del the depiction of colonialism? How strictly agua and fights the police while still wearing necessary is the representation of violence his film costume and makeup. The extras, and how authentic are the motivations of also in costume, revolt against the police and the directors? These are all questions that are help Daniel escape, recalling a scene they had deliberately left open in the film through the enacted as part of the historic drama. María ethical ambiguity of Sebastián/Bernal. The begins to film the confrontation but is im- radical Mexican director tries to persuade mediately stopped by Sebastián. Thus, the the women by claiming he will film and historic and cinematic temporalities of the document their past experiences, and his Cochabamba affair and the colonial exploi- benevolent impulse to represent the indig- tation operated by Columbus overlap fully 256 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies into each other. This scene is representative to reinvent cinema from scratch (it is too inter- of the film as a summa of the achievements ested in cinema to do that), nor does it adopt of regional cinema, and at the same time a a position of pure opposition on the question beginning toward a new global aesthetic. Bol- of form (it is too interested in communication for that); instead its relation to First and Second laín’s film is conceptually more self-conscious Cinema is dialectical: i.e. it seeks to transform than ever, and more aware of the difficulties rather than simply reject these cinemas; it seeks to of grasping the experiences of the Bolivians in bring out their stifled potentialities, those aspects ways that may adequately reflect their present of the social world they repress or only obliquely situation, and such self-consciousness of the acknowledge; Third Cinema seeks to detach what limits of representation in the end becomes is positive, life-affirming, and critical of Cinemas its force. One and Two and give them a more expanded, socially connected articulation” (Wayne 10). 6 For an interesting case study, see Tamara Notes L. Falicov. “Programa Ibermedia Co-Production and the Cultural Politics of Constructing an 1 For a detailed article based on research in Ibero-American Audiovisual Space.” the archives of the Center for Documentation 7 The commitment and sensibility shown and Information Bolivia see Assies, Willem. toward local Bolivian communities by the real “David versus Goliath in Cochabamba: Wa- crew of Even the Rain were documented in ter Rights, Neoliberalism, and the Revival of The Cinema of Iciar Bollaín, which makes the Social Protest in Bolivia.” See also the account insinuations by critics appear unfair, since they of the non-profit, consumer rights advocacy provided support for a local film school, a new group Public Citizen. “Water Privatization Case water deposit and a bridge, and paid the extras Study: Cochabamba, Bolivia”
Works Cited Haddu, Miriam. “The Power of Looking: Politics and the Gaze in Salvador Carrasco’s La otra Alvaray, Luisela. “National, Regional, and conquista.” Contemporary Latin American Global: New Waves of Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market. Cinema.” Cinema Journal 47.3 (Winter Ed. Deborah Shaw. Lanham: Rowman & 2007): 48-65. Print. Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Print. Assies, Willem. “David versus Goliath in Coch- Holden, Stephen. “Discovering Columbus’s abamba: Water Rights, Neoliberalism, and Exploitation. Even the Rain, Icíar Bol- the Revival of Social Protest in Bolivia.” laín’s Political Film.” The New York Times, Latin American Perspectives 30.3 (May, 17 Feb. 2011. Web.
Cronopio Photo by Norma Guzmán