Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of Death is a Photograph Culture. At the end of history, i am your co-host Chase here with Sam. And before I even ask Sam about why he gave me these movies, I just want to be clear that there were no trigger warnings given and I ended up watching a movie about... ah What did I call her earlier off my exam? A cancer-ridden pedophile and dog torture, which means we are talking about Y Tu Mama Tambien and Peros Amores, one of which I watched with my wife for our anniversary in Manhattan on the big screen. Wonderful film. But Sam, why did you give us this ah this this Mexican smorgasbord for this episode?
Speaker: Oh, well, ah that's so's a good question. As all good rabbit holes start, as Lewis Carroll knows, they all start in England, right? All good rabbit holes. And this rabbit hole that ended up with Itou Mama Ta Bien and Amores Peros starts with, for me at least, Children of Men, which is the sort of like Gen X guy film, a certain type of Gen X guy film.
Speaker: Yeah, effectively, lot of people are writing about children of men, a sort of certain type of Gen X guy, normally, he wanted to be sort of Mark Fisher or Mark Fisher adjacent. you know, lots of think pieces in the New Statesman, Jacobin, etc. around 2017, by guys born in sort of 1975, 1976.
Speaker: like guy born in sort of ninety seventy five ninety seven seen six Yeah, so Children of Men kind of came back into my horizon, I suppose, as a sort of important film around then. um But I had actually watched it as nine, ten-year-old. I think I'd rented Children of Men.
Speaker: Like the local sort of equivalent of like, ah what do you call them in America? Like a big box, a mega blockbuster, whatever. I don't even know where babies come from, but but I know they can't have them anymore, yeah. Yeah, and at the time, in the film...
Speaker: The film was like, think the thing that really got me as a sort of a nine year old, 10 year old was the sort of ensemble style, like background shots that Alfonso Cuaron, who directed Children of Men is so great at. I think there's a shot towards the end of the film when they're in refugee camp and there's like a battle sort of civil war going on.
Speaker: that was at the time held the record for the longest continuous shot. So yeah, that that was this kind of like film that was stuck in my memory. I started thinking about Alfonso Cuaron. Then, this is this is like a ah stupid game of like degrees of connection that aren't really connected. But then my brother ah ended up having a bit part in Alfonso Cuaron's latest television series oh about two years ago. Like a two second line. brother plays a bartender in What is it called? Alfonso Cuaron's TV series of Sasha Baron Cohen.
Speaker: um Israel, my love? No. No. Sorry. I think it might be Disclaimer. Yeah, Disclaimer. Oh, Disclaimer. Yeah, yeah. Cuaron happened to film like a scene in a pub that my brother was managing in West London. And yeah, my brother met him. um So I started thinking about a lot about Cuaron.
Speaker: And these kind of legacy, I suppose, 2000s directors. And I realized, oh, they're all Spanish. Well, it all has Spanish names. And I started thinking about, ah i think it's Irun Ito, isn't it? Yeah. He obviously directed Amoris Peros, which is another film I i hadn't, I'd never got the chance to see Ito Momotapian or Amoris Peros. What I had seen was Children of Men. And what I had seen was Irun Ito's, his second or third film, Babel.
Speaker: which, again, to me, is like ah it's the sort of perfect end-of-history film. um I think I've probably seen it again around age nine or ten, and that would make sense because that's the sort of slightly later films. um And it's more polished, it's more Hollywood, it's more Anglo-Saxon.
Speaker: Fable is like, you know, it's this very ah sort of war-on-terror style film about, you know, all these intersecting lives are affected by terrorism, or what is considered to be terrorism that you find out is actually a Moroccan teenager accidentally letting a gun off.
Speaker: So yeah, these these two films, Children of Men and Babel, were for me these kind of defining sort of art house adjacent but not exactly art house 2000s films.
Speaker: And also once you do a little bit digging, you realise that Irenutu and Caron actually come out of the same milieu in Mexico City in the late 90s or 2000s, along with another sort of defining director of my childhood, Guillermo del Toro.
Speaker: no I don't mean to interrupt, but Guillermo del Toro is such a fascinating guy to me because obviously Pan's Labyrinth had you know a big effect on me as a young man, whatever. And I have so much respect for him, but like i just it's so crazy to me that now he's just like, like what if Godzilla... you know what if if I remade Godzilla and also he's being ridden by Robocop and they were doing battle with Mothra who's being ridden by Skeletor. It's like, what are you doing? What's going on? Exactly.
Speaker: So yeah, Children of Men is its own category. It's actually, I think, a masterpiece. but No, Children of Men is also definitely one of those movies that like when I was getting into movies in like the early 2010s or whatever, it was just sort of like, here's a somewhat contemporary film that you like need to watch that is very, very good. Right? Yeah. And I suppose my interest in Itoubama Tabin and Amores Perros is like they're the substrate below this sort of the Hollywood breakthrough that is what kind of reached me in Sussex in England in like 2004 or whatever, right? There's this this earlier thing going on
Speaker: with these kind of breakout, ah new that they call it right New Mexican cinema. ah And I think Guillermo del Toro's one was actually very him, and it's we didn't pick i didn't pick us i didn't pick it to watch because it's just a bit too weird, which is ah it's called Kronos.
Speaker: Oh, I've never watched it, but I do know i do know of it. That and Devil's Backbone, I think, are his like two kind of early trend-setting movies for him, right? Yeah. Yeah. i yeah But I think they're less self-reflective, if we're going to use a fancy special term. Well, because he he likes fairy tales. I mean, not that fairy tales can't... like In fact, fairy tales are very sociologically interesting, but...
Speaker: Because with Del Toro, and again, I haven't seen those two early ones, but like something like Pan's Labyrinth is like, this is just a movie about the Spanish Civil War. you know yeah I'm going to tell you that. like You do not need to read through the text. The text is going to put it right there in front of you. you know And that's not necessarily bad, but it doesn't necessarily make for the most interesting analysis. and It's certainly not Gen X, unless you think of it as Gen X reflecting on... You know, it's funny, a little...
Speaker: inside, behind the veil here for the listeners, is I was going to have us watch a movie called Skipped Parts, which you can look up if you would like, that is sort of like like a late boomer slash Gen X reflecting on the mores of the 60s, the sexual mores of the 60s. But I eventually had to scrap it just because I didn't i didn't know that you know chronologically it fully made sense. But it's worth checking out as another very, very bizarre kind of a movie about young people and sex from like the late 90s, early 2000s. It stars ah Misha Barton, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and um Bug Hall, the guy who went on to be like a rad trad who lives in the wilderness and like yells at his wife now. And my pet theory is that that movie is what made him a rad trad because it's so like debauched and it's sexual. ifffity and yeah yeah It's like such a disgusting movie in a certain sense. Like it could only be made
Speaker: by the kind of person who like lived through the 60s and was like, well, like I hate how repressed everything was in the 50s, so I'm just going to say that everything is okay. That's going to be you know sort of like a ah German Green Party member in 1971, that kind of ethic.
Speaker: But I will say, to kind of pull us from there into Tu Mama Tambien, or actually both of these films, it's important that they're both Mexican because they're both made in the aftermath of NAFTA. And so they do serve a very interesting purpose as just like, what does Mexico look like in the mid to late 1990s? Let's check in on those. Oh, oh no.
Speaker: I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's basically sounds like quite like similar Brat, which we watched, uh, 1907, right? It's the end of the Yeltsin era. Well, I suppose that's at the end of a very short-lived era that, you know, is the end of another era.
Speaker: But this these two films, are sort of in the background, right, is the end of um the pre-party revolution, revolution institution So institutional revolutionary party who'd been in power since... Amazing name.
Speaker: Phenomenal name. Yeah, it's so like, it's oh, well, couldn't have done better. and Kind of like, oh, we're this, but we're not really this. We're also this. Well, and I just need to give a shout out here. like This is what the like parties in Europe who call them and Israel that call themselves like Friendship Today, they need to be naming themselves things like the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
Speaker: It's like very non-metaphorical and very adverbial in the sense of not institutionalizing the revolution. Yeah, so we should say, like to set the background for both his films, you you have a sort of elective dictatorship, right, which is distinct from the rest of Latin America, which is much more defined by like hunters and random keys and like communism.
Speaker: And like yeah like random sort of military generals seizing power. But in Mexico, it's it's this kind of sustained social democratic consensus that's also authoritarian that lasts from the mid sort of nineteen ten s all the way up until I think is it 2000 when they finally get out out of power? But the Mexicans, they don't replace them with like a left wing candidate or even like a far right candidate. They replace them with a guy called Vincente Fox, who is literally like the Mexican George Bush. It's hilarious. Mexican politics is great.
Speaker: if If you had to develop a parallel, I would, and I say this very advisedly, but because these this regime emerges out of this period of like deep instability through the 19th and early 20th century in Mexico, um you know the Mexican Revolution, I would compare it almost to something like Ba'athist governance or something like that. like A little bit more elective than that, perhaps, but sort of this like socialist tinged, you know we're not gassing the Kurds here, but like it is you know sort of social democratic, inflected, very authoritarian. In the case of Mexico, generally very anti-clericalist. That's a big part of the kind of revolutionary paradigm.
Speaker: Yeah, go and read Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. ah but Honestly, not a bad novel, in in in my opinion, but you know whatever. i I do think we also should signal, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, NAFTA, which comes into effect at the beginning of 1994, has an amazing logo, if you've never seen it, which is the Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. flags overlapping each other. It's like which is exactly a 1990s Microsoft Paint job. No, it is. it really it I think it look it appears to have been made in Microsoft Paint, like genuinely. It looks like clip art.
Speaker: ah Hey, well we we're watching this at a timely moment because I think the success of the NAFTA, the USMCA trade agreement, is being negotiated as we speak, isn't that the sort whether it? Whether to renew it or not. so Well, and it's hard to know what the answer to that question will be, um especially because now Mexico has turned in a more kind of left-wing direction under Scheinbaum.
Speaker: Latin American countries love electing, like, European migrants from, like, 100 years ago to be their presidents. Yes, and we should also say they also, they don't just love electing European migrants from 100 years ago to their presidents, they love, like, platforming European migrants from 50 years ago to be the directors.
Speaker: Because I'm like fairly certain that almost all three, well, they're called the Three Musketeers. I'm pretty sure they were at some point. Seems feasible. These three kind of pioneers of New Mexican cinema who all pretty much Gen X. Guillermo del Toro was born in 1964, so he's just a year before.
Speaker: Yeah, Quarón is 61. Yeah. Yeah. And when's the Aaron E.T.? It says here, 1963. So they're basically all like Jen Jones, like extremely late boomers shading into Gen X, which, you know, is in a way, I think, necessary because they're both relatively mature when they make these movies. They're in like their mid-30s, you know, more or less.
Speaker: um And because both movies are... especially in the case of Itumama Tambien, like very clearly set in a certain version of Mexico that's kind of in your face. Like in that movie, if we want to talk like plot generally, it's a movie about a very rich teenager and a more middle class-ish teenager, i would gather, like not super poor, but not super wealthy either. i would say it's it's it's slightly less um polarized in class terms than Amores, Pero's, right? Like,
Speaker: There is a character, so with all of these films, star Gail Garcia Bernal. Because like as we said in and in the No episode, he is the only, he is the guy. and For some inexplicable reason, he's the only man that any Latin American director will ever cast.
Speaker: Yes. And so he plays um the slightly more middle-class one whose name is Julio. And then there is the very rich one who, of course, we're told early on has an Aztec name, Tenoch. His mom is a very interesting character because she's this very like woo crystal sort of aura reading um you know wine mom, more or less, and the father of Tanauch is involved in the government. And there are multiple points at which throwaway comments are made about him like selling poisoned grain to you know laborers or just like clearly is involved in like horrific abuse and corruption. But they live, of course, in this like estate. The friend Julio, played by ah our favorite star, Gael Garcia Bernal, is a little more middle class, whatever. And then they both...
Speaker: sort of, um i don't know if I would say fall in love with, but become smitten with and enamored of a woman who is married due to Tenoch's cousin. and her name is Louisa, played by Maribel Verdoux.
Speaker: And she basically finds out that that cousin, her husband, cheated and decides to go on a Yeah.
Speaker: And of course the beach does turn out to exist spoiler um but they don't even seem to know where they're going for most of the trip yeah and it's it's basically a movie about what if a very upset sort of housewife character decided to sexually initiate to extremely horny boys who outwardly are very kind of rebellious and devil may care, but inwardly, in fact, have a lot of problems. And she sort of is...
Speaker: ah yeah A little bit like the psychologist or the the kind of philosopher from i Heart Huckabees, where she's like half sexual initiator, half like analyst. You know, she's breaking all the rules. The nihilist philosopher rather than... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, yeah. I mean, it's it's it's a film that is... This is something think quite like about Coran is that he, things are happening in the background. He's very much like a, simultaneously like a miniaturist and like a muralist in his films in the sense that you have this kind of main thrust of the A story, like you said, but then there are all these smaller things happening in the background. So like they're, I think they meet ah her at a wedding, don't they? Yes, where the Mexican president is in attendance for like two hours.
Speaker: Yeah, so Ernesto Zedillo, you see the back of ostensibly Ernesto Zedillo's head. um And I think like there's a kind of like an invite to sort of offer proffer to the boys. Do you want to go meet the president?
Speaker: um so you you' So you're right in the heart of like the kind of elite sort of cadres of the three in Mexico City. Mm-hmm. And I suppose it's kind of seen through Julio's eyes more than is through Tenok's eyes in some ways. Like he is sort of ushered in like Great Gatsby style in some ways into this elite sort of kind of rather rarefied milieu.
Speaker: um And yeah, but at the same time, Timalton is kind of sort of also being sexually initiated into, well, both of them are both pretty sexually experienced characters.
Speaker: Well, but also not. like they They are and they aren't, right? like they're you know Again, as I said, Sam gave me no warning, so little did I know I was going to be you know watching substantially more graphic version of The Graduate set in Mexico. But they are, and they learn along the trip that they've both had sex with each other's girlfriends, um which neither of them, of course, knew and were very kind of possessive of their girlfriends. But then when they realized they've wronged each other or seemed to get over it,
Speaker: But importantly, when Louisa does have sex with each of them independently, and then potentially at the end, both of them together, or they have sex with each other, i would say that's not a thousand percent clear what happens there. um But in any case,
Speaker: And again, it's it's pretty graphic. i'm just you know This is sort of on par with like a Japanese pinku movie, if if listeners know what those are. So like it may be a little bit less just because it's not Japan, but it's it's pretty bad. And like in both cases, it is over within about 12 seconds. And she sort of at one point is like, you're all talking a big game, but you're you know you're coming in like 10 seconds. like you're you're Basically, she recognizes what she probably should recognized the whole time, put her in prison, that they are they are boys. I mean, they're they're essentially children, and they...
Speaker: She's kind of attracted to them because they talk such a big, honest game. There's a sort of like Robin Hood or outlaw thing about them. They have these rules that they abide by, which of course includes not having sex with another member of the group's girlfriend. Aunt Wrong, that happened. But in any case, they're kind of like an honor among thieves type group. And this is attractive to her precisely because her boyfriend is sort of her husband is this kind of like effete literary guy who spent like 10 years abroad.
Speaker: She's from Spain. Like, she's not from Mexico in the first place. We should say there's a weird parallel in both films, there? Because the Amores Peros, of the main characters, is also ah sort of a woman from Spain in Mexico.
Speaker: Yes. there and And actually, it's worth noting here that it said at one point that her family... she has a sort of broken family situation we don't have to get into. But the key about that is that her aunt who raised her was like a massive Franco supporter. So he does kind of like see these little class dynamics throughout, like, which I think it it is kind of interesting in itself because, you know, we associate libertinism in a way with, i don't know, the sexual revolution, but it's like, no, this is just like a Francoist, you know, a child like Francoist haute bourgeoisie who's like coming to Mexico and being like, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to initiate the boys of Mexico into the ways of the Metropole's sexual experiencedness or whatever. Yeah, it's and I think it's interesting to even Tenoch, right? um There are these scenes where he he always lifts, whenever he goes through a piss, he kind of lifts the toilet seat with his foot rather than his hand. And he does this in like quite a lot of like sort of horrible motels and stuff, but he also does it at Tenoch's apartment. Or Julio's apartment.
Speaker: Sorry, Hulé's apartment, which like, ostensibly isn't, it's quite nice. Yeah. So yeah, you see this kind of, and obviously like Tenoch is this kind of, I think, who's he played by again? He's played by um Diego Luna.
Speaker: Who it was a telenovela star, my understanding is. Who is, I think, half Scottish. Says here, yeah, his mother is Fiona Alexander. Yes. So like the the racial politics, I think, are like of Mexico are very much like on show in this film. Amores Peros, too. We'll get there. But like it's but I think that's interesting in itself, right? Because the official ideology of pre and the post-revolutionary era is that Mexico is mestizo. Mexico, the race is no longer, or caste is no longer like a thing. Obviously, it still is a thing, but like the official sort of doctrine and rhetoric is that
Speaker: everyone is kind of like blended together in this kind of equal national sort of identity. um And yeah, obviously these two films sort of come both at the end of the fracturing of the party system that has been in place for 80 years. I think Mario Vargas Lelosa called it the perfect dictatorship, right? Because it was deniable.
Speaker: But it's also like this fracturing of this lie, which is that Mexico is like somehow like has has gone beyond race. It's post-Juarez. I mean, that's how I would think about it. Like, you know, you've had your first indigenous president. There's idea. Like, Mexican nationalism is very important in the history of the Mexican Revolution, right? Where, like, yeah it's ah it's a civic nationalism. But I think Cuaron is really trying to...
Speaker: You know, put a spotlight on the fact that that is basically a lie, you know, and that you can only have an Aztec name if you're a white guy whose mom, like, works with crystals. Not in, like, a traditional Native American, like, medicine way, but in, like, a sort of Charles Manson type way or something like that. Yeah, it's kind of like the hint that mom is, like, kind of moving in, like, fine art circles, kind of curatorial circles.
Speaker: yeah things are going on. like does she She has some weird sexual art, I think, at one point. Yes, in the house. yeah She shows the boys. it's It's also worth saying that because this is a road trip movie, a lot of it involves going through these sort of um you know native communities or mestizo communities throughout ah Mexico. right I think they're in northern Mexico for the most part, but I could be wrong about that. I think they're going to Puerto Escondido, which is in Oaxaca. So I think, if anything, they're probably traveling like southwest.
Speaker: Okay. well But anyway, they have to go through these communities. And it's an interesting movie because she, from Spain, seems much more amenable to the locals than the boys do.
Speaker: like She's able to sort of build friendships with like a local family at one point and dotes on the child of this local family. Whereas like all the boys do is ask their um their sort of host as they get to the end who's running this bar they're shouting at him like very inappropriate sexual questions like in a bar full of people. yeah and it's just like, it's got to be deeply uncomfortable for this like 45-year-old man to have this like 16, 17-year-old boys just screeching questions at him. Whereas she kind of like,
Speaker: She's like meeting with the local... She meets a woman who's like 100 years old and finds this very, very, um you know, kind of powerful. She buys kind of trinkets and thinks of them as having kind of a folk authority, which does feel very like metropol coded to me. Like the local elite...
Speaker: what do you call them, the creolos? Yeah, creolos. Yeah, yeah. They're too close to it. you know They can't do it. But when the peninsulares show up, when the the people from you know actual Iberia show up, they can sort of wash themselves in the local culture because they're basically tourists in a way that the creole elite cannot. you know At least that's how I read it. yeah Yeah, and it's interesting that the there are these moments where violence is sort of I mean, the the the violence of the two boys against each other, like hitting each other in the head and stuff, either like sleeping with each other's girlfriends is very present.
Speaker: But the kind of structural broader violence of Mexico at that point in time, right? you had the Zapatista rebellion and the cartels are sort of growing more and more powerful at this point. is there, but it's sort of hovering under the surface. as's a point where they're driving through the countryside and there's a kind of roadblock, but it's it's half a roadblock, but also half a request for the so anyone who's passing through to donate money to, I think it's a quinceanera or it might be a a marriage, I can't remember exactly which. I think it's just like a local beauty pageant type situation. Because your queen is very beautiful is what she says.
Speaker: Yes, yeah. But obviously the the sort of implicit message there is that like violence probably would have Like the boys sort of, I think they've they've internalized the, you know, if they hadn't paid something bad probably would have happened, but because they're so rich in comparison to the people they're paying, it's like, so, you know, it's, it's just beyond like even sort of thinking about or bothering with, you know, it's, you just give them whatever, but there's a kind of implicit threat of violence, I think in that roadblock.
Speaker: Yeah, and i I think actually it's an opportunity to talk about the way that the two movies reveal kind of different dimensions of this like totally fractured state apparatus.
Speaker: Because with Itou Mama Tambien, you've got kind of... we're We're with, for the most part, the quite rich. And then we see the poor and the conditions are not great. But at the same time, these are sort of like...
Speaker: It's not like we're for the most part seeing laborers in fields who are just being like you know whipped by some sort of like holdover you know master from like a hacienda system or something.
Speaker: The only hint we get there of progress in thick scare quotes is at the end when the family they've been staying with are basically told that they're going to be doing a development on the nearby beach, which means that you know they're going to get kicked out. And we basically learn that this man is never going to fish again, even though his ancestors have been fishermen for a bajillion years. right Whereas Amores Peros, because we are with the the poor for the vast majority of the movie, or at least several of the main characters are quite poor,
Speaker: we get this more like ground level understanding of the kinds of violence people are going to have to do in order to get by in society. The violence in Itu Mama Tambien is either structural or just outside of view.
Speaker: It's at a checkpoint or it's the force that will eventually you know develop beachfront. But because our characters are rich, they themselves are kind of free to play on their like locus amenis of sexual initiation and experience. right She's not getting pregnant, whereas in Amores Peros, one of the main plot points is the difficulty of dealing with constant pregnancy as a poor person in Mexico City.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's it's almost like Itu Mama Tambien is almost like a consequence-free film up until right at the end. yeah Yeah. All of these characters live in a kind of world where nothing nothing really concrete affects them, particularly, <unk> until sort of like this coda where they they sort of find out that life is real. Things actually are real. There are things in the world that have sort of dire consequences.
Speaker: But it goes very Richard Linklater, though. like it What I mean by that is it the end of the movie is basically them meeting the the two boys, Tenuch and Julio, meeting for one last time after they've enrolled in college. And i think one's doing like engineering, one's doing like biology. i think Tenok is like a prestigious private Catholic university doing business and economics, isn't he? Oh, yeah, that's what it is. Julio is at UNAM doing biology. UNAM is kind of like this sort of semi-socialist state university in Mexico City, which is still like incredibly prestigious. But it's, I guess, again, it's like this very subtle thing of like the sort of, I suppose, the sort left-wing intelligentsia versus the kind of capitalist elite, if that makes me sound. Yeah, yeah, the the descendants of the Porfuriato or something, yeah. Well, and and but that that is to the point, which is that their ending...
Speaker: tinged as it is by these broader social factors is ultimately this kind of personal ending about just the death of friendship among youth. you know You could almost be like, oh, this is really a story about how you have your friends in high school and then you go off to college. And you know by the time you come back from your second winter break or your first winter break, you're like, oh, I like those guys, but I kind of have my new friends at college. I'm not really going to see them again. like I remember my parents telling me in high school, like, you're going to make new friends in college. You don't worry about this.
Speaker: Proved you wrong, mom and dad. Just saying. Still friends with many of my high school friends. I've actually, again, i think this is trope because I'm i'm friends with many of my second-year-old school friends. but No, yeah, exactly. but But it is sort of like in this idea that you move on to a new stage in life.
Speaker: And in that sense, i called it a Linklater movie, which is maybe a little dismissive. Not that I hate Richard Linklater, but, you know, his kind of Gen X, early 2000s, late 90s movies are often about, like, these deeply kind of personal sort of situations that need to be worked out. They're very individual.
Speaker: And I think that's kind of the the symptom that I would like to pull out of this movie is for all of its discussion of these social factors that are very real, it is still interested in these sorts of like individuals and their lives and relationships and the kind of like small problems that emerge between them.
Speaker: um which, you know, one of them is that Louisa dies. It turns out she's had cancer the entire time. She knew this is presumably why she was willing to go on a sort of Lord Mountbatten-style spree through through the suburbs of Mexico City and down to the beach.
Speaker: Like, she knows that she's basically trying to, like, absorb as much life or, like, what's the psychoanalyst who theorized um organon or organ or whatever it's called, the like, It's like the sexual energy ah Reich, Wilhelm Reich. Yeah, like she's just trying to like get as much of that in her and like flowing through her as possible before she, you know, dies of this cancer, presumably, you know, that we could chalk up to the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War or something based on her family's affiliations. and And the boys are just kind of left in the wake of that. And they've had like this experience that presumably will shape them for the rest of their lives.
Speaker: But Tanaka is going to go on and like post about how Claudia Scheinbaum sucks you know in 20 years' time when he's like in his late 30s. And um you know Julio maybe at this point is like a a doctor like working in Juarez or Mexico City or something and is maybe like a light liberal sort of affinities, but is a little bit suspicious of Scheinbaum because she goes like a little bit too far or something. Like, you know. Oh, yeah, I've i've met like dozens of Julio types in Mexico who would call themselves left-wing, but at the same time, they're like, oh, it's Marana.
Speaker: They're just like for idiot, stupid peasants. It's like peasant left-wing. They're playing to the worst tendencies of like our our uneducated peasant population. It's like, whoa! Yeah. He's like, is i you know, giving you like a COVID vaccine while saying this, you know, like, there's like a a Kamala Harris poster in the background. Yeah. Like, you know, it it is a little bit, that's still going to happen. You know what I mean? And in that sense, it's not really a movie about resolving or even really in any giant way investigating these social issues. It's a movie that takes these social forces seriously while fundamentally remaining about, you know, about these people. Like,
Speaker: In that sense, it's a little bit like a Mike Lee movie, but the Mike Lee movie would infuse those social dynamics more strongly into the characters' fates or the the overtness of their fates, right? Yeah, I think that's why it's such a Gen X movie in a way, compared to, say, Children of Men, which obviously has relationships in it, the the main relationship relationship between Clive Owen and Is it Sigourney Weaver? I i think um in that film. But like broadly, Children Men is much more structural, right? It's about big biological structural questions about declining birth rates. And also, I suppose, whether Britain really is a rainy fascist island or not.
Speaker: Whereas, yeah, this film, it's getting to that. and Those things are there, but they are much more muted in comparison to Children of Men. um And it is, I think it does, yeah, it does fall into a kind of like,
Speaker: you could watch it and like then go and like listen to like walk in the sunshine and listen to like Moby. Yeah, that could be all you took away from it. Like, oh yeah, man, like let's go to the beach. Like, ah, one that's like early 2000s, great.
Speaker: If anyone out there knows Moby, I would like you to invite him on the podcast so I can excoriate him. He might be like one of my most despised celebrities. for like a ah there iss There are too many reasons to list on ah on a single sort of... He's sort of like the American Morrissey in a way, which is maybe a strong and strong claim.
Speaker: But Morrissey, at least made good music, I guess, would be the the difference at some point in his life. it's yeah and I think it's it best perhaps a limitation that the directors are sort of working through themselves, right? I'm pretty sure Karon...
Speaker: Irritu and Toro from sort of Kriyao style, you know. um Yeah, like so Coran, born in Mexico City, the son of Alfredo Coran, a doctor specialising in nuclear medicine, and Cristina Orozoco, a pharmaceutical biochemist.
Speaker: Yeah, i mean, they're all like very much from the sort of white upper middle class of Mexico City, right? Yes. i mean, not that that is preventative or somehow in contrast to necessity for, you know, ah making bad films. Like, they make good films. But I think that even in Ito Mama Tambien, like, Koron is sort of only just managing to approach his real subject, which is kind of quite bleak in a way, which he gets to in Children of Men. Yeah. Well, I think it's the it's the late 90s, early 2000s. I mean, certainly in the American context and in the British context, this is a time of, you know in a way not dissimilar to no, which we talked about recently, which is like the limits of sort of your political imagination are maybe ousting the prevailing party, which happens in Itumama Tambien. I think the president is like loses the election or something at the end of the movie, if I remember correctly. Is the D.O. is replaced with Vincenzo Fox, right? Yeah. But as I said, it's like it's it's really still within the paradigm of there is no alternative. Because you go from a socially democratic you know authoritarian party that has become increasingly neoliberalized over the 80s and 90s to a kind who is just like...
Speaker: Yeah, effectively like Mexican George Bush. He's part of the um the PAN, which is the kind of then-national conservatives, religious conservative party. ah But basically connected to the same style of economics as the three you were pursuing.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that that's actually ah a good way to transition to Amores Peros because it has some of the same limitations, I think, but the vantage point is totally, totally, totally, totally totally different.
Speaker: You know, neither of these is exactly apocalypto. You know, we're not getting sort of like the full outskirts of what would become in that movie Mexican Society, but even Central American Society more broadly, since I don't know that Apocalypto is set in Mexico per se, I don't really remember.
Speaker: But anyway, or what would become Mexico. But in Amores Peros, we have instead a series of stories that that are set in very defined sort of different social classes that are mixed and and sort of chopped in different ways. So at the lowest end of this is Chivo, who actually sort of looks like a guy who attends my church, who sort of like goes barefoot and is very helpful around the church, which is to say a sort of holy fool, you know, big beard, long hair.
Speaker: Chivo, in this case, lives kind of in this shack kind of dilapidated building with like a million dogs. Right. And we find out as the movie goes on that he used to be, of course, a leftist professor who got involved in a guerrilla movement, left his family behind. And on the other end of a prison sentence has become this sort of like, at one point someone says a wino, but at this point he's more of a, he's basically a hit man. Sorry, Sam, him go ahead.
Speaker: No, he's always the most fluid character, right? It's it's less of a sort of trial pyramid where he sits at the bottom, but he's kind of like, I suppose, the the fluid sort of thread that joins the the various social classes of Mexico City together, right?
Speaker: Well, I i just meant he's at the bottom because he's like... He is literally destitute, but... Yeah, like he's he's the vagrant. Like everyone else in the movie, you know he sort of belongs to the lumpen, right? If we're thinking of this in like Marxist terms. But as opposed to him, it's it's a choice, right?
Speaker: I think he would have liked to return to his middle class life. you know We kind of get that through parts of the movie, but ah he really can't because he and his wife agreed that they would tell their daughter that he was dead.
Speaker: And then his wife like bigamously remarried after he disappeared. And there are many, many, many. Morris Parra is two and a half hours long, so there's like a lot that happens in this movie. a lot of the movie is him sort of longingly looking at his daughter, like trying to figure out how to reconnect and putting on his like broken glasses to like reunite with himself as it, you know, sort of in this like Paul Pot style, like by putting the glasses on, he becomes an intellectual again. And, you know, and then you've got the Gael Garcia Bernal character, Octavio, who lives with,
Speaker: His brother and his brother's wife and their mom. ah His brother is named Ramiro, the girlfriend. Wife is Susanna. Yes. And he basically is in love with Susanna, wants to run away with her.
Speaker: His brother Ramiro is very abusive towards Susanna. And that, trying to get the characters out of the way just because there are so many stories that happen in this movie. There are. And then the last group. I wish to say that they have a dog. The family, very importantly, has a dog called Kofi. Kofi. Yes. Kofi Annan is named after the UN General Secretary.
Speaker: I did not catch that. That is crazy. I don't think it actually is. But like it may as well be. Why not? Given what he's doing. now um but And then the third main narrative is about this sort of woman who we're introduced to as being...
Speaker: like One of the most beautiful women in all of Mexico who's played by a Spanish actress named Goya Toledo, um who's you know very light-skinned. Her name is Valeria. And she has recently moved into an apartment. I'm sort of, by the way, the story is told somewhat out of order, which is also a very like late 90s, early 2000s move. I think of movies like Go or Run, Lola, Run that do a lot of this like rewinding back and forth stuff.
Speaker: She is in a relationship now with, uh, is his name Daniel, I think, who's basically, he's an editor at some kind of magazine and is leaving his wife and two daughters for his new relationship with the most beautiful woman in Mexico, essentially.
Speaker: who has a beard, who's a sort of, you know, silver fox kind of guy that she ah goes on TV with, because I guess she can't be seen with this mere magazine editor. She has to also be dating a celebrity. And their dog, Ricci, who also plays a role in the movie. Of course, it's called Amores Peros. Loves a bitch, I guess, is the most normal translation, which is a pun, I suppose, in Spanish as much as English. So, Sam, where should we start with this, like, yeah gigantic cast of characters?
Speaker: i I think we should start where a big we should we should go chronologically. I think it's just the easiest way to do it. We were introduced that the sort of first scene. is i mean it it is quite i think someone in Letterboxd called it pup fiction. um Because it's, yeah, it's effectively a sort of, myriad narratives all connecting, around one dogs and two, a car crash, central car crash, yes which allows three of our characters to intersect. I think Octavio, Valeria and El Chivo. Um, all all things connect in the first five minutes during this car chase where Octavio is being chased by this kind of gangster character where he's got brilliant frosted tips and like it looks like a Gen X sort of like rave guy from Portland. Is there any way can really describe him? He's fucking terrifying. He's like terrifying. Also, he's got like five golden teeth. He's the most terrifying villain I've ever seen.
Speaker: i can't remember his name. Is it Jorge maybe? Hurocho. Hurocho, yeah. Or Hurocho. Yeah, Hiroto. So basically, it it starts, they're being chased by this guy. He's got a pistol. He's sort of rushing through Mexico City.
Speaker: Hiroto's trying to shoot Octavio, whose dog has been shot. We don't quite know why. He manages to avoid him. He then catches up with him. ah The the villain main villain, this guy Hiroto, catches up with him.
Speaker: ah He hits a red light and he decides to go through it to try and avoid being chased by this guy with a pistol and hits Valeria's car. Yes. ah Basically taking her out. At the same time, Chivo just on the street chilling his dogs and sees the crash happen. And of course, we later we later learn of course that he's out on a hit and this has interrupted Valeria.
Speaker: It's hit. Yeah. So that's where we start. And then it and then it does a kind of classic ninety s early 2000s. Rewind. How did I get hit? Yeah, exactly. You're about to find out. Yeah. ah And yeah, we we sort of enter with Octavio. he's living in this kind of very cramped house with his mother and his older brother who is, has got this, this sort of girl pregnant.
Speaker: He's like, I think like she seems to be under, like she's like 17, 16. She does seem quite young now. Yeah. Yeah. He maybe is about 18, 19 cause he's working. Grocery store clerk, yeah. Yeah, just grocery store clerk. Octavio doesn't seem to go to school. we don't He's just sort of, yeah, has no like real employment or at school. My assumption is like maybe he finished high school and now he's just sort of lazing about. It's not really clear. Yeah.
Speaker: You mentioned that it's cramped, but I guess it's important just to say that like they are obviously like working poor, basically. like they're It's a very almost 90s American story of like... you know teen pregnancy, essentially. If a really young girl has a kid, now the sort of like shitty boyfriend husband, Ramiro in this case, needs to go out and work. But of course, being a grocery store clerk does not really pay the bills. So he's also now involved in various robberies that he's doing to actually pay the bills, right? You can imagine a version of this story being told in like South Central LA in the ninety s Yeah, except he's incredibly unsympathetic. like you yeah like That sounds like he's sympathetic as a character, but he's also like incredibly menacing, ah like full of sort of uncontained rage. I think the only character I see him interact with, who he's not like a complete arsehole to, is his kind of a sort of thief buddy yes friend who has in the car. who He does are kind of quite touching, they sort of rub heads.
Speaker: quite touching me. Yes. Yeah. My wife and I were joking in the theater that they were going kiss the first time they did it. They're just going to go. It was quite homoerotic. It was cute. I was like, that was the one point where was like, okay, maybe you're not entirely sort reprehensible as a character. But the rest of the time. humanity in there. Yeah. He's like this boiling of raging, like rage filled, like yeah, pus filled sort of guy. He's just like sort intolerable for everyone else to be around.
Speaker: Yes, although, and and i you're completely correct that the movie does not make him sympathetic, but I think one of the main points of the movie is that the only way that you're going to sort of get on with life in like late 90s Mexico City is by becoming some sort of hard-nosed criminal of some kind or another. So you can sort of give him that even though he is horrific to everyone in his life, like beats his wife, screams at his family like terrible. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, just this is like I think it's possibly one of the like sort of oddest depictions of brotherhood I've ever seen in a film, in the sense that they like they could be almost strangers, Octavio and um Romero.
Speaker: Yeah, almost no brotherly affection between them. At all. it's It's really bleak, yeah. Well, and it's made worse because Octavio like really, really like wants to be with Susanna and has this sort of fantasy. And she keeps telling him it's a fantasy, though he doesn't want to believe that it is, that they're going to kind of escape. I think it might be to Juarez, but I can't remember exactly. Yeah, I guess not Juarez. Yes, and the only... were We're sort of burying the lead here, which is that the way that Octavio realizes...
Speaker: that he can make the money to do this is by becoming involved in dogfighting because basically Susanna lets their dog coffee out. The dog ends up wandering your dogfighting ring where Hirocho... It starts running the UN. Yeah, well, what's the difference? No, but Hirocho, you know, has this sort of like very powerful... i will say, i mean, granted, I looked into it afterwards. It seems like they did basically the most responsible job you could possibly do while making a movie. I'm going to say, how did how did they do it?
Speaker: So we looked it up and the dogs are playing and wearing ah mesh muzzles in the scenes that look like dog fights. And then the sounds are added in post, right? And then the dead dogs of which, let me warn you listeners, there are a lot of dead dogs in this movie. like People often say the hardest thing for them to handle in a movie is like an animal that is made to suffer, especially like a dog or a cat. And if you have trouble with that, this movie is going to be very difficult for you because it is filled with with um this. And so lot the dead dogs are just sedated and then their fur is sort of like mucked up in some way to make it look like they've been harmed. So they did knock a lot of dogs out because there are a lot of sequences in this movie of dogs being like limp dogs being thrown into cars after dog fights.
Speaker: Anyway, Kofi basically... kills this dog that gets sicked on him outside of this dog ring. This then leads them to realize, oh, like he that that's a way we could make money with this dog. Horocho's like, you owe me money for the dog that you you killed. i was just going to say quickly, it's it's it's quite Gen x and it's kind of almost like a fertilization of shock.
Speaker: i am Yes, very. shock jo It's kind of got that shock art nature to it. I was thinking about when I was watching it, there's a kind of infamous, I thought it was a YBA piece, but I don't think they are technically YBA because they're Chinese conceptual artists. But it's called, there's a piece from 2003, a sort of conceptual installation piece called Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other.
Speaker: don't know if you've heard about this. No, I haven't. It's placed like two American Pitbull Terriers on two treadmills. ah The treadmills are turned then turned on causing the dogs to run to each other, but never allowing them to make physical contact. And then obviously they try and kill each other.
Speaker: Oh my God. Which is like, again, it was done by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, who, yeah, born in 1974. So there you go. Surprise, surprise. Even even Dung is... Surprise, surprise. Even the Cultural Revolution couldn't stop that from happening, you know? Yeah, think there is something quite gen X about the like the violence being in your face and that kind of Tarantino, almost like Tarantino-esque way.
Speaker: It is, yes. And I think you're completely right because it's it's hard to watch. I mean, there dogs get shot in this movie. There there are a lot of awful things. But the the point is that he realized he can make money this way, and he does. His coffee is quite successful.
Speaker: um And essentially, they are able to you know build up a kind of nest egg for their escape. she will eventually betray him and go away with Ramiro, but not before he gets gangsters to beat up Ramiro because the guy who runs the dogfighting is named El Gordo, or as it was translated in my version of the theater, Fatso, which I thought was really unnecessary because like I think for an American audience, Gordo would be recognizable as just like a nickname. Comparatively, not that fat. Yeah.
Speaker: But I think the thing that bugged me about it is like fatso in American English is very like coded as like an insult. Whereas I think in, and I could be wrong, but in Mexico, gordo is more just like a nickname. Like it's not that it doesn't say you're fat, but it's not like a, like a slur, but like calling someone fatso is like very pointed. You know, it's not like an affectionate nickname you give someone. um But anyway,
Speaker: Their part of the movie, I think, if we're zooming out here, is very much about the kind of lengths you have to go to make it in post-NAFTA Mexico City. And dogfighting, in that world, it becomes clear, is sort of just like a thing, right? it's not um It's never moralized in any way. It's just something that you do to make money if you have the means to do it, or that you bet on because you're like a guy drinking out of a tequila bottle who has like 50 pesos to his name and just like note is a freak.
Speaker: Yeah, like, and that's kind of it, right? There's not, it's not a movie that is interested in being like, this is bad. It's kind of a movie that's interested in saying like, well, what are you going to do if you're that Are going to work as a fucking grocery store clerk? Or you going to have Kofi... I was going to say, the the interest the interesting thing about the dogfights is that it's obviously like this kind of, for like certain viewers, it's this kind of like medieval throwback, you know? Like, blood sports are kind of like, you know, it's the most medieval sort of like actualistic thing possible. And yet the two main guys taking part... Three main guys taking part of it. Octavio, Harucho, his best mate, who his name i forgotten, Octavio's best friend, all look like they could be out of like a Berlin rave movie.
Speaker: berlin yes like you know rave movie Yes. They're all really like Gen X, like teenagers, early 20s guys. Like they're not, like the guys watching all look like they haven't showered in like eight months, but like they always look fine. It's very bizarre. They've all got like frosted tips and like wraparound sunglasses and like weird like punk boots on. Like it's very like cybernetic. Yes. But like none of that is commented upon. It's just sort of there. No, because it's,
Speaker: It's just teen culture, I think. You know what I mean? like it It's not a movie where anyone ever goes like a club and has a good time. like The closest we get to a club in this movie is literally a dog fighting arena in like a defunct swimming pool where there's like you know mold and like flora growing out of the cracks in the swimming pool with like blood streaks everywhere because dogs have been killing each other in it. like it's It's bleak. It's dire. It's not good.
Speaker: um which provides us with a certain level of contrast to Valeria, who, of course, is the subject of the second major part of the movie, who, again, there's a dog sort of tortured in this part in the sense that they have this, of course, very different dog, right? All the fighting dogs are like pit bulls and German shepherds and like these like raving sort of angry medium to large, well, large-sized dogs.
Speaker: But she has this little kind of... Maybe like a terrier, like yeah it's It's a small medium dog. Like it's not a large dog. And importantly, it's so small that it manages to get into the floorboards because there's a hole in the floor of the new apartment. It's also, we should say it's called Richie. Yes. Which to me was hilarious because I kept thinking of Guy Richie.
Speaker: Which is obviously like the other end of the spectrum. But Valeria, um you know, her problem is essentially that she's she's filled with the ennui of the socialite, I guess is how I would describe it. She's sort of a model. Of course, because this is a Gen X movie, there's a gigantic poster of the campaign she's doing for a perfume right outside of ah her window. She's been harmed in this traffic accident that results from...
Speaker: this dogfighting dispute that happens between Horatio and Octavio. Again, we're not here to summarize everything that happens. Well, we should say, just, yeah, but quickly, Horatio shoots Kofi yes during the dogfight because he's winning and then Octavio stabs Horatio in the chest. So that's how we get the... Yeah, that's... And it again, this is all very, like, dire and sad. Like, it's definitely not I ordered... Fun fact about this experience I had at the movie theater. I ordered a hot dog. and the guy the guy who's at the counter, who I don't think knows what I'm watching, is just like, ah he talked very slowly for some reason. he was like, oh, his body's very high. He's like, oh...
Speaker: I just put them on so I won't be ready for like 20 minutes. And this led to this, see me just coming out like every 15 minutes trying to get a hot dog and like it just not being ready until in the final 10 minutes I finally came out and it was ready and I'm like eating a hot dog as the movie is coming to its conclusion. You know, it's sort of like a bloody, terrible conclusion. It's very emotional. There's a guys crying like five seats away, and I'm like trying to silently eat this hot dog in the back of the theater.
Speaker: um But anyway, her problem is, of course, she's in an in a wheelchair because of this accident and has this new relationship that's very hopeful, but also means she's isolated because he's at work. And so she's just dealing with... them you know, how do I say it? She's defined by her work in a way that the kind of lower class characters are not.
Speaker: And if she cannot model, she has no meaning. She has no no purpose in life. And so all she can do is play with her dog that is very quickly lost beneath the floorboards of the apartment, and which are filled with rats, we learn later on. So, you know, you can't even get away. It's a city. You know, urban life is always urban life. Even in your beautiful apartment, you can't get away from them. And I think her her part from a kind of Gen X phenomenon is about a similar class to what we have with Julio and Tenoch in the movie. um This class of wealthy, very white people who are defined by the work that they do and the play that that work allows them to do. And she's removed from that and her psyche is just destroyed. Like two days after she can't work anymore and is out of the hospital, she's like screaming at her new husband or boyfriend or whatever. And it's just like... I don't, everything's about money with you. Get my dog out of the floorboards. Fuck you. You know, it's like very, her whole psychology just evaporates because she can't be photographed for like three days.
Speaker: And he's like, he's like sort of mentally tearing up these kind of like beautiful parquet floor. like Yes, because she's like tearing up and he's like, I can't, don't have the money to replace them. And then she, of course, it turns out that her leg gets gangrene, so it has to be amputated. And like, he at that point is so mentally broken. Because he's, of course, left his wife and two children, but this woman who like is a beautiful model, and like everything about her that presumably he was attracted to is now like totally destroyed. Her mental well-being is just gone. and so then he starts to... And you're afraid in that moment that he's going to kill the dog, because he's just like banging up the floorboards, and the dog is somewhere beneath them. I have to say, the most pathetic, i wanted the dog.
Speaker: I didn't want anything bad to happen to Kothi, but I wanted something bad to happen to Richie. Yeah. Fuck that dog. I mean, Richie is like the classic like rich person, tiny dog who like... I was going to say, because is this a thing a new world thing? Because in the UK, if you're like an upper class person, having small dog is seen as vulgar. No, no. I mean, yeah well how do I say this in a way that is um in a way that is is does not betray me as a sort of like middle class American?
Speaker: I mean, i think small dogs are coded around like two different groups of people in the United States. One is like a certain kind of socialite, like a Paris Hilton type person. Like, I want to put this dog in a bag and like go about the city. And the second is, yeah, a more maybe like...
Speaker: poor or to some extent middle-class sort of like woman whose entire life revolves around her dog, but the dog is probably not well taken care of, if that makes sense. Like, like it it's sort of like i would die for my dog, but the dog is always just like pissing on like pads in the house, like is never even let out, like kind of thing.
Speaker: And I think the the big dog has resonances in the same way where like, if you have like a farm or something, you're going to have a gigantic dog who like runs around that farm.
Speaker: But also, if you live in like an impoverished area and you want like a dog that protects you, you're going to put up the Beware of Pitbull sign and like have like a ravenous Rottweiler Pitbull that like defends your property and is like an extension of your manhood and masculinity. There's like a gender dynamic here, is I guess what I'm saying. yeah I was going to say, yeah, because there's no one with like a Labrador or a Golden Retriever or like ah an Irish Wolfhound. These are the kind of dogs, you know Those would be like very, like, I'm an upper middle class person who like, I enjoy going to Nantucket and I have like a black, in fact, what, you know, shout out one of my good friends has a black lab, is a sailor, like loves to go to New England during the summers to like sail around. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense.
Speaker: my My point is that Richie is an annoying dog, and if he was a proper dog, he would have figured his way out from under the floor, because all dogs have a good sense of direction. In my opinion, dogs should have a sense of direction, and it's it's a pathetic dog. But I think it's in a way, it metaphorically exemplifies the kind of helplessness of this class in Mexico, right? like Yes. She is sort of helpless, and the dog is also kind of helpless.
Speaker: You could, i mean, listen, I don't know enough about Mexico, but if you were in the United States, you could definitely call the cops or animal control to help you get that dog out. Like, you do not need to just, like, scream. They put chocolates in a dish down there for the dog, which is one, because chocolates are, of course, lethal to dogs. Dogs. And they're like, we'll just put some chocolates in a bowl. He loves those. Especially small dogs. Yes, because it's small. Yeah, less mass. Yeah, yeah exactly. So like I'm like, okay, so they're not just helpless, but they don't even know what they're supposed to be feeding this dog. like These people are just useless in like every conceivable way. um And yeah I mean, you do feel bad for her to an extent because, of course, she's going through a lot. But I think they exemplify a certain yeah a certain like helpless, doted-upon class of like...
Speaker: ah He's a professional. She's a model. I guess that's a kind of professional. And our third grouping, of course, would be Chivo, who we already kind of covered, but it's worth saying on the subject of dogs, he is, of course, surrounded constantly. He's able to do his hits because he just looks like a street person, right?
Speaker: And he is constantly surrounded by this pack of kind of like... beautiful street dog, beautiful to me because I have a ah soft spot for sort of like dog dogs. Like I like a ah dog that's drooling and sort of disgusting. That that to me is the ideal dog.
Speaker: And they're kind of following him around and he loves them. And that is like his anchor in life now that he's at a prison. And he enters the story when he, well, he enters it early on when he defends his pack of dogs from Hirocho who wants to use his pack of dogs for fighting.
Speaker: But he really enters the story when um he rescues Kofi from this car wreck and kind of does surgery upon him that he presumably knows how to do because he was a gorilla. So he's become like a field surgeon, you know, through his travels and the wars that he's fought.
Speaker: And ah he takes him back to his home to integrate him into his pack. And probably for me, the saddest moment in the movie, like truly just like the one part where I just stared at the seat in front of me for like a good five minutes because I was just like, fuck you, Inyarati. Like, just go to hell. Like, don't put me through this. Like, this is where the shock really did work on me.
Speaker: He comes home and of course, he has no idea Kofi is ah is a fighting dog and Kofi has just murdered every single dog in his pack. Big, small, otherwise, they are all just dead. And there's this awful... ah and And his dogs have these cute little names like Freehole, Bean. you know They have these like these very like affectionate little names. And he comes home, finds Kofi, and holds a gun to Kofi's head and it seems like he's going to kill him. But His love for dogs is simply so strong that he lets Kofi live and he becomes his one dog left in his pack.
Speaker: He was like, again, like I'm not rooting for Kofi the entire film. He's a no... Treating unfairly, yeah. And he's my kind of dog, which is not the dogfighting part, but the part where he's like a big drooling sort of you know monster of a dog. Yeah, and it's...
Speaker: i I should say Mexico City, and people have, what is the term for people from Mexico City? Chilangos? Anyway, they are obsessed with dogs. I think this is part of the sort of conceit of the film.
Speaker: Because if you go to Mexico City now, especially in the more middle class areas, you'll just see like a guy with like 15 to 25 dogs like tied to his waist. I like people in Mexico City joke that like dogs have more rights than people. Yeah. In way, I think Amores Peros is like it's yeah it's an interesting film in the sense that dogs have become like a sort of like furniture in the city. There's just like like ah dog parks everywhere and like yeah people are just sort of like doting on dogs like like left, right and centre. And obviously Amores Peros, dogs are treated somewhat terribly.
Speaker: And I think this is actually, like by way of like summarizing the movie, you know in terms of its relevance to the podcast, I think that it it proves a useful comparison there with Itumama Tambien, which is actually a movie we said earlier about these relationships that sort of have these social dynamics behind them, but ultimately it's the individual experiences of these wealthy Criollos that matters.
Speaker: And later ah in Amores Peros, yes, it is about relationships, but the pun of the title, i think, gets at how it is a little bit more reflective of social conditions. Like, yes, you have Octavio who wants to go away with Susanna. You have the relationship between Valeria and her man.
Speaker: You have Chivo's relationship to his wife and daughter that he's trying to get back, all of these things. But like, the love is a bitch is also, I think, like the the love for your dogs, but also like the idea of love in a society riven as this one is by just like utter poverty. Like, the movie ends...
Speaker: with Chivo, basically the only character who survived in One Piece, who has not just become like a beaten, brutalized wreck. like He shaves his beard, he locks together these these two brothers, one of whom has hired him to kill the other one, and he's so disgusted by their upper-class squabbles that he just ah handcuffs them in his apartment, puts a gun between them, and leaves them to kill each other. One of whom, is I think, is Jorge Salinas, who is like he also plays like an a sort of yuppie arsehole in this other...
Speaker: ah Mexican new wave film which is called Sex, same Shame and Tears yes is from ninety ninety nine which is 1999 which is terrible it's an awful film but he like I think he is like Mexico's like go to for like yuppie bastards but yeah I mean again so you have the upper class sort of come back into the film and they're again sort of both pathetic Yeah, they're – because, you know, to summarize that part quickly, they essentially – you don't know the brothers. He just has his business partner. He's obviously very uncomfortable being around Chivo and these dogs and, like, all – what he sees as, like, squalid disgustingness. He says, my partner's cheating me. I want him dead.
Speaker: We learn that, in fact, these are brothers. The brother claims he was never stealing from him. So you get the idea that this might just be kind of a power struggle. Like he doesn't want to share the business anymore. Like just these like stupid, no money is enough. And I think that's why Chivo sort of just is like, all you two can just fucking kill each other. Like I'm going to go back. I'm going to reinsert myself to some extent into the white into the life of my daughter because his wife dies early in the movie, his old wife.
Speaker: Not his old wife as she's ancient, his like kind of ex-wife from the pre-guerilla days. And he shaves, puts the suit on of the yuppies that he's now just like chained up in his apartment and walks off into the distance with Kofi after, what is he sells the car, I guess, the truck that he has to a chop shop.
Speaker: Well, he goes to his daughter's apartment, he breaks into his daughter's apartment and pastes his own face into her graduation photo with, I suppose, her stepfather leaves a message on her answering machine. But importantly, he originally has a picture of him with the beard, and then he gets a new one taken of him once he's shaved and put the suit on and put his glasses on and like re-become.
Speaker: It's quite a conservative film in that sense, isn't it? In the the kind of um the way that Chivo redeems himself is like, it's the The film is isn't sort of any way nostalgic for the guerrilla days of Mexico, presumably in the 60s or 70s, or the sort of Marxism of that time. Like, it's seen as a joke, kind of as a failure. like And it's it's it's sort of... Well, he says that.
Speaker: On the answering machine, he says, I thought that I would build a better world for you and your mother. Obviously, I failed. right like he Which is very post-political. And in it's sort of it's very Huelbeckian in its kind of like...
Speaker: This is like the the idea that you would like join a guerrilla group and like fight for a better Mexico is absurd, like patently absurd to this, to to the the the universe of this film.
Speaker: And the only way out of his kind of absurd failure is to like re-bourgeois, sort of in bourgeois himself. No, to go back to the last time that he knew comfort or stability. I mean, I think... Because I think we should be closing out.
Speaker: I think if if if the movie has like an ideology, it's that. It's a kind of longing for a stability that no longer seems possible. It's not possible for the elites because they're so inwardly facing with their own stupid problems. It's not possible for the poor because the country is immiserated in a kind of post... I mean, it was already immiserated, but truly in the era of neoliberalization and NAFTA like is...
Speaker: without question, immiserated. the only money to be made is in the informal economy of like hit doing hits and dog fighting. like There are no actual jobs. You either like fight with you either get a dog and have it kill other dogs or you take out hits on the elite. And the job creation there is just based on like the petty rivalries of this elite class who just wants to kill each other. Yeah, and it's just it's just it's just damn money downstream from... Yeah, it's a rising a rising tide lifts all boats, but it means that the lumpen are being paid to assassinate businessmen. so that the other businessmen can get richer. like that is And so in that sense, it is, I think, more successful in depicting these things, but maybe less overtly Gen X in that it actually does have a more robust, I think, political imagination about what's going on. And it's not just like... you know It's not um I Heart Huckabees or some of the other films we've watched where it's kind of about interest groups. It is sort of fundamentally interested in the way that the economy and society of Mexico is broken um for a variety of reasons. It's not really interested in like pointing fingers at that outside of saying like these rich people suck, but it at least has that in the imaginary. yeah i would also say it's it's both films are quite good in the sense that
Speaker: Unlike, I think, so much of the American media, they don't foreground drugs. No. Or the cartels or narcotics or, like, narcos or any of that stuff. Like, you know, I'm sure that stuff was sort of increasingly of increasing relevance and became much worse under Vincenzo Fox and into the 2000s it became really, really bad.
Speaker: But, yeah, it's not really interested in that narrative, which I think is is a useful corrective. Yeah, no, I think you're completely right. And, yeah, part of that might just be a timeline issue, but...
Speaker: it There are movies that are more interested in pointing, and this is actually very like Mexican, it feels to me, though I'm no expert, pointing fingers at the government, essentially. that like We've had this kind of corrupt regime for such a long period of time that things have totally atrophied. It's a little bit reminiscent.
Speaker: I hesitate to say this because it's a little bit demeaning, but kind of reminiscent of like a liberal in a post-Soviet society who... like you know Mexico doesn't have the the liberty of like imagining that the US is good and wants to help them. But like if you take that part out, the um the sort of like Georgian liberal who's like, if we could just get rid of these post-Soviet bureaucrats who form this like authoritarian institutional regime, we would be happy you know if we could just join the EU. Yes. I think there's a very much...
Speaker: among sort of what you might call upper and mid developing countries, like countries that are obviously not like the level of somewhere like Haiti or Ethiopia. Well, Ethiopia has done quite well, but like the level, they're not completely destitute as countries, but they're kind of upper mid.
Speaker: think it's more like Indonesia, Mexico, Georgia, like these kind of countries. Yeah, there is very much like a class of elite liberal who thinks that the only... Problem is corruption. Yes, yeah, exactly. Like, corruption becomes, like, a shorthand for, like, everything. That is the end of history position, though. The end of history position is, like, no, no, no, no. no Like, the fundamentals have been worked out. The problem is just that we're not democratic enough.
Speaker: And bad actors. and bad actors, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, that are are misusing the system ah for their own ends. I mean, Russian liberals are like this, too. Which, again, is not to say that the regimes in place in those countries are good, right? I'm not saying that, like, Vladimir Putin is, like, good, right?
Speaker: No, it's it's it's to say that the critique is is necessary but not sufficient. Yes, it's it's very limited and it's imaginary. Okay, I think that's a good place to leave it.
Speaker: And I will just say, please shoot us an email over at deathphotopod at gmail.com. Perhaps we will read on the show. Subscribe. And if you come to a paid tier, we're almost actually now at the point where I think we can start activating the kind of benefits that we would get. We just need to get it to enough people so that that system works and makes sense. And feel free to go even higher if you really, really love what you hear. Either way, you should like and rate on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, obviously Patreon.
Speaker: The vast majority of content is free. And I promise you, and I think Sam will agree, that this is a 100% dogfighting free podcast. You will see or hear. We will not be engaged in anything like that. i We can't make any promises about catfights anymore. With that, I bid you adios and avoid a buena suerte for you and your day. um and yes, have a a wonderful one.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
