#TAGS:
silly humor

informative
secrets of life
thought provoking thinking

fresh perspective
multiple good interpretations

immersive atmosphere
beautiful scenes
fitting soundtrack

unexpected outcome
unacceptable suspense (developments predicted too early)
acceptable suspense (developments predicted minutes before)
exceptional suspense (developments not predicted)

untraceable (natural) acting

#COMMENTS:

This is a realistic version of the “purge.”

“nobody had died before the festival”

An obvious example of paganization of western ideas, we should treat this with a (maybe mildly degrading) lens of environmentalism. This is exactly what would happen if advanced aliens visited us and brought with them stuff not worthy of our own developments, and just left later because they lost interests. Here we have the colonizers bringing christianity and some modernity but left presumably due to lack of natural wealth (gems and mines). We should really think about exploratory actions’ ecological effects. (Also a strong hint for this interpretation is that the gringo trying to skip to next town is a geologist, and the name made-in-usa.)

It was not very good for the story that the geologist had no redeeming qualitiesis. But I suppose as the symbol of western interventions, it has to be so. (still as a matter of practical storytelling, why do sex in the first place (ye two pump chump)? why come back to find her when not showing clear signs of being in love with Madeinusa?)

It is an interesting take on the coming of age story. When the sister screams gringo committing the murder, Madeinusa realizes that no god is watching after all, and she can really just do whatever she wants - join in the blaming game and finally leave town to Lima.

now coming back straight from Zizek’s Pervert’s guide to ideology: maybe the amoral behaviors are not results of a blind God but precisely God’s existence outside the festival; God and people’s covenant with it prevents solving problems (desires and conflicts) through “rational” means (because his words is divine, irrefutable and we must do everything to achieve those goals), henceforth when God is dead, all hell breaks loose.

#TAG SCORE: 19