Jan
13
Aguila o Sol
Posted by: Brian | January 13, 2009 | Comments Off on Aguila o Sol
Aguila o Sol………what an interesting movie. I’m really glad that this is a blog because the language was way too fast for me to understand most of what they were saying and I wouldn’t be able to give concrete examples like I would have to in an essay. That said, I guess it didn’t really matter too much that I didn’t really understand what they were saying because I still understood that there wasn’t much of a plot. The whole movie, even the parts where they weren’t on an actual stage was like stand up comedy………When they were on stage though, just from the way that they dressed up, it seemed like they were trying to appeal to a lower class as well as an upper class..also when they were selling newspapers, it seemed like they were trying to make a connection with a lower class audience so that the comedy would appeal to them as well as the upper class. It reached out to all classes because it showed that they worked themselves up from the bottom when they were orphans and on their own to when they had their own act (this could perhaps give hope to a lower class audience?) and also to an upper class audience, as we could see when the characters were performing on stage, the camera kept showing how much the audience like the comedy….but going back to what I was saying before, this doesn’t really apply to when they were children, but I noticed that they were constantly trying to entertain the audience (I mean the audience watching the movie, not the audience that was watching the show) through constant stand up comedy and slapstick…even the transitions attempted to entertain…for example when Cantinflas and Carmelo are going from the theatre to the bar, and the movie shows comedy with “El Gallego” before going back to the main characters. I also noticed that when they’re drunk, they talk in nonsense and then sing when they are transitioning to another joke or section of the stand up comedy or to end the scene.
The plot can’t have much purpose other than to entertain, especially if they have to put in such a large and random dream scene. They seemed to want to show off the talent of the other characters ( I guess that’s what the other show was for too) some more, and add more slapsticks with the coconuts falling on their heads (or rather a crew member throwing coconuts at their heads)…otherwise there wasn’t much point it, or any part of the movie. So the movie was made up of a combination of the two points that I mentioned here (and probably more)…constant entertainment, and appealing to more than one class…maybe the dancing in the dream appealed to a higher class…I have a question though, and it’s not really relevant, but here it is. When Cantinflas and Carmelo are on stage and they are talking about verb tenses, doesn’t that imply that they have had some sort of education? Or do you learn grammar from selling newspapers on the street? This most likely isn’t important, but it’s something I noticed…At the time when they are telling the joke they seemed to be dressed up like lower class people, so if they did need an education for that then it doesn’t really make sense.
