Feb
4
El callejon de los milagros
Posted by: Brian | February 4, 2009 | Comments Off on El callejon de los milagros
I think this film had a lot to offer. It certainly portrayed issues of the working class in Mexico and their relationship to their external world. I also found really interesting how the film was divided into different parts, telling different stories from different perspectives. The stories always began by the same men playing dominos. I wonder what the symbolism of the dominos is. Probably it means how every action is caused by another action until someone ends up worse than the rest or better off.
Don Rutilio was a very interesting character. He is introduced with a hard personality when he yells at his son for not helping him at his bar. He tells his son that he should stop hanging out so much with his friend because people will start thinking he is gay. He seems really bothered by this at that point. He is really detached from his family externally, but in reality he does everything for them. Rutilio shows his real feelings when Chava, his son, leaves to the United States. He cries and tells his wife how they are left alone. The next part when he shows these feelings is when he realizes that Chava has named his son after his father, Rutilio. That’s the only point when Rutilio holds the kid and doesn’t want Chava to leave the house. His anniversary with his wife was also really weird. I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that he was seeking other types of love. He just didn’t think grateful for anything, neither lunch nor the present, or the fact that his wife had made such a great effort to make him happy. It seemed like he had no purpose in his life at that point since everything made him angry and unsatisfied. He agreed to make love to his wife after she insisted a lot and seemed like he was just doing her a favor. His affair with the young boy from the store was surprisingly a public thing. People made fun of him, but no one to his face. Rutilio was still the same person towards everyone else and was still respected in spite of this.
The neighborhood was represented really well too, and seemed like everyone was struggling in some way, from economic to love. Love seemed like a place where everyone wanted to get, but couldn’t. At the end no couple was happy with each other; they had major fights of stealing, cheating, and commitment. However, this represents real life, and how people react to different issues.
