862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

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dwk
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862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#1 Post by dwk » Wed Mar 09, 2016 9:40 pm

Canoa: A Shameful Memory

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One of Mexico's most highly regarded works of political cinema for the audaciousness of its attack on the Catholic Church, Canoa: A Shameful Memory reimagines a real-life massacre that occurred in 1968, eight years before the film's release, when a group of urban university employees on a hiking trip were viciously attacked by residents of the isolated village of San Miguel de Canoa, who mistook them for communist revolutionaries. Intercutting depictions of the days in the workers' lives leading up to their journey and footage from a fictional documentary about the village and the autocratic priest who governs it with the scenes of the atrocity itself, director Felipe Cazals (Las inocentes) creates a terrifying sense of menace, capped by a gruesome denouement. Adopting a gritty newsreel style, Canoa is a daring historical document and a visceral expression of horror.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITION:

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Felipe Cazals, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New introduction by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
• New conversation between filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and Cazals
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano

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Minkin
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Re: Forthcoming: Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

#2 Post by Minkin » Wed Mar 09, 2016 10:50 pm

dwk wrote:according to this tweet, Criterion is going to release Felipe Cazales Canoa
The film can't be as good as the Wikipedia article
The town has an active night-life, and people will often stay up dancing and drinking $1 Pilsener Grandes. If you get hungry, there's a man who sells the most amazing shawarma off the back of his truck for about $2.

During the day if you are not relax on the beach, eat the fresh ceviche, or stick a straw into a young coconut.
Has anyone seen the film / is it on anyone's radar? If true, it sounds like a rather obscure choice. It doesn't appear to have been restored by WCP; I wonder if Criterion might finally be getting around to more Mexican films.

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Jeff
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Re: Forthcoming: Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

#3 Post by Jeff » Wed Mar 09, 2016 11:53 pm

Minkin wrote:The film can't be as good as the Wikipedia article
That's a different Canoa (in Ecuador), but I'd watch a film about the shawarma guy.

It's a film that's new to me too. Alfonso Cuarón is behind the restoration and the effort to canonize it as a milestone of Mexican cinema. I suspect that Criterion became involved at his request. The Guadalajara Film Festival's rather poorly translated page about the film confirms that Criterion will handle the 40th anniversary release.

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Gregory
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Re: Forthcoming: Discussion and Random Speculation Volume 7

#4 Post by Gregory » Thu Mar 10, 2016 12:26 am

Great and very surprising news, but less surprising about Criterion's involvement upon learning of Cuarón's close involvement. I posted a few sentences about the film and the old DVD several years ago, but it's unquestionably a historically important film, which dramatizes a fascinating event that took place in 1968, about a month before the infamous Tlatelolco Massacre. A group from the University of Puebla on a climbing expedition seek shelter in San Miguel Canoa, rumors fly about them being communist subversives, and without giving anything away, some fake blood is spilled in Cazals's telling of this story, which is one of the most unique Mexican films of its era (under President Echeverría, who had ruthlessly lashed out against student protestors and later faced short-lived charges of genocide). Not for the average viewer, of course, but certainly deserving of much wider distribution and visibility.
There's a little more I want to say but I'll wait to make sure this is definitely coming.

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PfR73
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Re: Forthcoming: Canoa

#5 Post by PfR73 » Thu Mar 10, 2016 10:25 am

About 10 years ago, Austin Film Society did a series devoted to Cazals, and this was the first film they played. I remember it being pretty interesting, so I'm looking forward to a chance to revisit it with Criterion supplements!

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captveg
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Re: Forthcoming: Canoa

#6 Post by captveg » Thu Mar 10, 2016 4:08 pm

Very cool. Criterion's Latin American film selections are relatively small, so the more the better.

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swo17
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#7 Post by swo17 » Thu Dec 15, 2016 5:04 pm

Coming in March

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Cronenfly
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#8 Post by Cronenfly » Thu Dec 15, 2016 5:27 pm

Nice! I can understand why there are not more left-field releases like this (especially if the title[s] in question lack such esteemed champions willing to chip in towards the extras), but they are always welcome.

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Ribs
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#9 Post by Ribs » Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:44 pm

Beaver

For some reason I wasn't expecting this to look very good but it looks stellar.

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Minkin
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#10 Post by Minkin » Mon Mar 27, 2017 8:08 am


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xoconostle
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#11 Post by xoconostle » Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:12 am

Did "Best Years of our Lives" change anything? Did "Paths of Glory" or "Platoon" change anything? Would encouraging young Americans to see these films convince them that War Is Hell such that they might influence voting or cause them to protest and disenfranchise war hawks? Or would young Americans simply be more aesthetically edified and cinematically informed?

The question of whether or not art, especially politically-infused art actually changes history's course is one that's been debated openly and passionately since at least the 1930s. It's a good question, and iMHO should never inhibit free expression, no matter what one's convictions about any answers.

I realize there's no love for El Svet hereabouts (I'm not very familiar with his antics besides what I've read here) but in this case, felt that his hand-wringing encourages some apt food for thought. Although he expresses shock at the atrocities depicted in Canoa, he rightly indicates that things are worse in today's Mexico. I seriously doubt if a dated film like this, no matter how great it is, would convince large numbers of young people who live without hope of a prosperous future from, for example, being recruited in to a narco cartel's shock troops for quick cash, or from effectively cleansing the PAN and PRI of corruption. Or for that matter, the church of its bad apples.

All that said, I thought very highly of this film and wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it just because of my frustration with status quo horrors in Mexico or anywhere else. Apathy and acquiescence empower corruption, and there's always hope that good art will do good.

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Gregory
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#12 Post by Gregory » Mon Mar 27, 2017 12:45 pm

The review shows a pretty limited understanding of Mexican history, as the Dr. fails to mention the biggest elephants in the room—the politics of religious authority especially in the countryside, the related rabid anticommunism, and the broader context of power in Díaz Ordaz's Mexico and in the post-Revolution era even more broadly. I can only assume that with the single mention "local demagogues" Dr. Svet had in mind the priest, but he really dances around the major problems the film taps into in its portrayal of these events, and he instead focuses on the easier targets of criminals and corrupt businessmen.

The film isn't essentially about a "dangerous vacuum" in a remote hinterland where "shady businessmen, and powerful drug lords" hold sway, since looking at the events in Canoa in even just a slightly broader context leads us to confront the arguably even more shameful memory of the federal government massacring student protesters in the D.F. only weeks after the Canoa massacre as part of a concerted effort to destroy the student movement and suppress the Left, followed by an erasure of these events from the country's official memory. These are forces that are so insidious and interwoven that it's hard to summarize them, and certainly the problem is not one of drug cartels running Mexico and the federal government failing to maintain order, as Svet outlines it. The state and civic-religious authority, the climate of fear and rabid anticommunism and widespread disenfranchisement were much more at the roots of these events rather than the state failing to maintain order and leaving power available to "bad dudes," as Trump would put it.

At the end of the film, there's a sense of "business as usual" going on, but again the political reality that continued on in the years following 1968 was not all about the spread of drug trafficking; if it's any one thing it's clearly the continuation of "dirty war" carried out the federal government and the military, with U.S. backing, leading to another massacre of students in 1971 among many other atrocities. I guess I can only wonder about Svet's reasons for ignoring all that, as he explains what Mexicans should do in light of the film.

Also, in Mexico the film is generally considered a major classic of their national cinema and was already widely seen on DVD, so it's not as if Mexicans need to "discover" the film 40 years after its original release just because there's now a Criterion edition of it. But the review argues that "young Mexicans" should be urged to go see it again in theaters, see their country in a different way, and then "actually do something" to make Mexico better? :roll: I'm not sure that's how national social and political upheavals tend to operate.

And as a footnote, because Svet was clearly very moved by the way the film portrayed these events and notes that it's "much like an objective documentary," I don't understand why he claims that "the story ... seems grotesquely amateurish." Oh well, yet another review to remind me that I obviously should've just looked at the screenshots alone.
Last edited by Gregory on Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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domino harvey
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#13 Post by domino harvey » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:10 pm

As I'm sure you know, he's a rabid right-winger (and not the only one over there either!), so his dance around the actual issues is intentional, lest his biases be exposed more clearly

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Gregory
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#14 Post by Gregory » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:22 pm

Yep, I was just now revising my post to hint at that a little more explicitly.

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knives
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#15 Post by knives » Mon Mar 27, 2017 1:49 pm

I'll co-sign Gregory's post. To just shout, "Mexico is getting worse," is at best really misunderstanding the situation in Mexico and how it varies from state to state.

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jbeall
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#16 Post by jbeall » Wed Mar 29, 2017 8:09 pm

Not following the Svet discussion, but current events in Mexico seem IMHO to be an entirely separate matter from events in Canoa. To a certain extent, Mexico was dealing in the late 60s with some of the same social turmoil found outside of Latin America, though it obviously manifests itself differently in particular places.

What surprised me was that Canoa was so close to Puebla. You'd think that the relatively proximity (just 7.5 miles, according to the subs; I don't know Spanish) would mean more interaction, and less hysterical paranoia toward some university employees there for a weekend, even accounting for the Jim Jones-like priest. (Even though the actual events predate Jonestown by a full decade, and the film predates the massacre by two years, I couldn't help drawing a parallel.)

Though maybe the film's point is about how a populace can be so quickly whipped into hysteria that afterward it's hard to remember why everyone was so upset. To be sure, the priest (who's been forced from a position before) is canny enough to measure his words (and lie outright), but afterward it seems almost as if no one understands how the events happened, even though the film itself shows this. This tension between the emotional charge of the event itself and the non-understanding of its participants/witnesses/victims is where Cazals influences Cuaron in films like Y Tu Mama Tambien.

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Gregory
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#17 Post by Gregory » Thu Mar 30, 2017 4:34 am

jbeall wrote:What surprised me was that Canoa was so close to Puebla. You'd think that the relatively proximity (just 7.5 miles, according to the subs; I don't know Spanish) would mean more interaction, and less hysterical paranoia toward some university employees there for a weekend, even accounting for the Jim Jones-like priest.
Great point about the proximity. Oh, there was interaction all right, but it fueled paranoid public perceptions of university students and leftists, through the power of the state controlled press and the reach of the national government under Díaz Ordaz. The "hysterical paranoia" was hardly just some rural or religious-fanatical outbreak of insanity, though this film may mistakenly create that impression; I think it was part of the country's entire Cold War political environment. The role of the priest, Enrique Meza Pérez, was so prominent in this that it's easy to hold him accountable as the ringleader and stop there, but he was really the intermediary between Canoa and the regional and national factors that can create a climate that fosters not only horrifying lynchings but wholesale massacre of students by government forces.
Though maybe the film's point is about how a populace can be so quickly whipped into hysteria that afterward it's hard to remember why everyone was so upset. To be sure, the priest (who's been forced from a position before) is canny enough to measure his words (and lie outright), but afterward it seems almost as if no one understands how the events happened, even though the film itself shows this.
If it was hard to remember or understand why tensions ran so high that these killings could take place, I'd suggest that it wasn't because it all happened so quickly but instead a combination of:
-a complete failure of the police to investigate and convict the real perpetrators
-a failure of the media to investigate and report on what had taken place (generally the same media that had sowed insane communist-infiltrator paranoia in the first place)
-reluctance of residents to speak about what had taken place
-lack of effective procedures for holding the priest (Meza) accountable, especially due to his political connections
And so a couple of indigenous residents who could barely understand what was being done to them were railroaded and scapegoated, and the whole thing was basically swept under the rug until this film came along.

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knives
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Re: 862 Canoa: A Shameful Memory

#18 Post by knives » Thu May 11, 2017 12:46 am

I thought this film was brilliant. The barebones of it is done in a Costa-Gavras style, particularly the opening, but Cazals mixes in a lot of other aesthetic traits including a large section reminiscent of Land Without Bread with a Fellini-esque tour guide. It's a perverse and humourous way to deal with a truly horrifying situation and probably the best way to prevent the film from either going the exploitative route on one hand or being a boring and safe docudrama on the other. Even though the film's sympathies are clearly with the students Cazals does such an effective job presenting and contextualizing the town that the final actions they perform (which we know about from the opening scene) is more depressing than scary which is not what I thought would happen. Only really the priest comes across as a villain.

I also have to say I'm all the moreso confused by Svet's comments. Perhaps the extras suggests Cazals had a transformative goal, but the film seems to me more educational in purpose highlighting that this happened and how it happened clearing off any legends or conspiracies that surround the film. In that respect this reminds me in its seeming intent of Gitai's recent Rabin though I found this significantly better.

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