First of all, it was quite strange to me that this 1948 movie is black-n-white, because Down Argentine Way in 1940 already has the technology of a colored movie, but the lack of coloring is not affecting the impact of this motion picture, and I am so glad that we finally get “down” to a more realistic life-style. All the four movies we saw before are somehow fantasy, like bubbles in the sky that we common people can never touch, all thouse celebrities and wonderful dancing and singing, and horse show….

    This is a really really great piece of work, the tension and those hints that appeared at the beginning which all have a reason afterwards, like the lottery Dobby bought, and the gold-digging history Howard was telling the first time Dobby and Curtin saw him. However, it was not very convincing for me the brusque change of Dobby in the second part. For me, I see no reason he changes so much from one extreme to another. At the beginning he begs for money and he feels fine about it. He is not very picky at the kind of work he is offered, and when he and Curtin know that the contractor is a liar, and they find him, beat him and get their salary back, Dobby has the chance to take all the money the contractor has in the wallet, but instead, he doesn’t even think about taking one more peso than what’s entitled to him. So it’s really difficult to imagine that such a decent man will change so much after he finds the gold, especially he even tries to kill Curtin, who has saved him before.  Of course this is the main idea about this novel, that Don Dinero es el más poderoso, but at least from the movie, I don´t think his change is well explained.

    This movie is already after the Good Neighbour Era, and we see a totally different Mexico. However, as I said before, it´s a more realistic world, because first of all, we finally see local Mexican speaking Spanish, and Howard translates for the Anglo. So what´s different is not hidden anymore. We also see some similarity as the Federales do hunt down the bandits like US police chasing for bad guys. So Mexico is not a lawless place. Anglo and Latin do have differences and similarities. Pretending that in this world only exists that latter wouldn’t make our planet better, just like the Good Neighbour Policy, which couldn’t last long.

The Indian tribe that Howard lives with in the end is a very good example. They have their own norms, like they consider it polite to smoke other people’s tabacco, and they have to thank Howard for bringing back the boy’s life, and they would even use force to keep Howard with them. These may seem wierd at first, but in the very essence, this is what every people would do. People offer hospitality by giving away what they have, like food or place to sleep for even strangers in old times, and we do thank those who have helped us, just that each and every one of us do it differently. So being same and different is actually the same thing.

Back to the main theme of the movie/novel, which is long-lasting since, maybe, the time when human people first invented MONEY, it’s like a curse for me, that we think we humans are clever enough to create this and that, but in the end, we discover that these creations become our masters. We human beings are the biggest enemy of our own kind (and of course, of all other species). There are no other animals or diseases that have killed more human people than human people ourselves. Yet we still are at guard toward wild animals, and considering them as a threat when they come to “our” land, the land that we took from them long time ago. I recently read a news saying that somewhere in Canada people had to shoot dead a bear because it came to the city and became a threat to the people. And I was so angry, because you could have just used an anaesthetic rifle instead. Maybe it was an urgent situation, I don’t know.  It’s just so difficult to understand the logic these days, that since every human has their human rights, even the most cold-blooded serial killers, who has deprived other people’s human right, they can live in a well equipped prison cell, enjoying their life sentence. They will have a doctor to attend when they are sick, and they get fed everyday. Yet those animals…. I think I am a little carried away….

The movies shows that paradise/happiness is actually not built by money. Curtin says the happiest time of his life was when he worked in a orchard; and Howard finally decides to stay with the Indians in Mexico and he is treated like a god and where he lives is a paradise, because he used his knowledge and saved the drowned Indian boy. It’s really a interesting question to think about, that since we created the concept of money, why and how come that people think that money is the thing that could make them happy? It’s easy to prove it negative, because it’s impossible to think that before the creation of money, people were never happy.

So happiness and money is not necessarily related, nor is Latin America and money, so by crossing the border south what could people get?