Photo by Geoff Carter
In Gods’ Country: Film Review of Gods of Mexico
The term documentary is defined, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, as a “…motion picture that shapes and interprets factual material for purposes of education or entertainment.” For myself, the term “documentary” brings up images from An Inconvenient Truth, Gimme Shelter, Woodstock, Night and Fog, Harlan County, U.S.A., Nanook of the North, and Bowling for Columbine, a wide array of films that either carry the burden of weighty social messages or exist as historical artifacts. Some, like Night and Fog or Gimme Shelter, do both.
Of course, like any art form, a comprehensive definition of documentary film is nearly impossible to attain. For every 9/11: One Day in America, we have a Fahrenheit 9/11. For every Woodstock, we have The Last Waltz. And what about the epic Civil War by Ken Burns? Or Koyaanisqatsi, which uses documentary footage to construct a sort of visual tone poem embodying a sensibility more than a reality. I suppose—because documentary film uses “factual material”—that this begs the bigger question of what truth or reality is, and how these are produced—or reproduced—in the endless variations of this genre.
Gods of Mexico, like Koyaanisqatsi, stretches the boundaries of what documentary film can be. For marketing purposes, it’s been pigeonholed into the documentary film category but is actually more of a visual tribute to various indigenous Mexican peoples as they exist in their rural communities. The film documents these people and their work but does not attempt explain them—it simply records them. According to the description in IMDB , “it follows the resistance to modernization in rural Mexico. It is a reminder that it is still possible to live in tune with our essence as human beings,” and is subtitled “a portrait of a nation through its land and peoples.”
While detailing the painstaking—and back-breaking—labor expended in harvesting salt or mining for silver, Dosantos chronicles these processes solely through visuals. There is no narrative from the participants or the filmmaker; there is no story being told. The beautiful imagery is simply there, existing, left for the viewer to absorb and possibly interpret—or simply appreciate. The distance writer and director Helmut Dosantos maintains between the subject and the viewer is at first a bit puzzling, leading to the question of intent. If he does not want—or need—the viewer to understand why the workers are digging furnaces or hauling powder, what’s the point? What does he want us to see, to understand about his subject?
The opening sequence of the film, subtitled “White”, follows a group of workers as they process and harvest salt with methods they have probably been using for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The first shows two men graphing out hand-digging a large hole in a butte which the viewer eventually realizes is a blast furnace. Rocks are carefully stacked and cooked. The powder is taken to a set of shallow pools where it is constantly stirred and mixed until it is crystallized. The beautifully symmetric pools
The workers, ranging in age from late teens to the elderly, work silently and deliberately. They carry bags of powder down hand-laid stone stairs in bare feet with no hesitation or trepidation, as if walking these paths are second nature to them. Everyone knows exactly what to do and when to do it. There are no words spoken—the routine seems so established and ingrained that speech has become superfluous. At times, during the mixing process, the sweepers move in what seems to be an almost unconscious rhythm; at other times, the camera cuts to panoramic shots of the surrounding desert, which seems to be both an extension and the source “la fuente” of their existence.
The next few chapters of Gods of Mexico focus on geographic areas and are also labelled with the names of some indigenous Aztec Gods. While the opening and closing sequences are filmed in color with normal motion, the middle chapters are composed of mostly static black and white portraits of people in their environment. These portraits are as carefully framed as photographs, and, indeed, except for the happenstance movements of wind or animals, they are static.
Again, Dosantos offers no explanation or background for his subjects. They simply are in this film, existing as integral parts of the landscape, and—we might surmise—the history and very fabric of the land. Most of these portraits are done in natural settings with traditional garb. Shepherding, farming, fishing, hunting, washing, and other everyday activities are depicted in formalized compositions. Some other less traditional frames include an albino girl in a jungle, a group of painted men standing in a river, and attendees at a funeral. The framings are simultaneously commonplace and epic, and a mesmerizing, almost hypnotic effect is produced as the film changes from one image to another. Watching them is almost like flipping through an almanac or an issue of National Geographic; the images themselves—and the mostly expressionless faces—tell little of the lives of those behind the film frames. The substance and sequence of their lives—and the live upon which they live it—are enigmatic.
The final chapter of the film is entitled “Dark” and follows the work of miners in Northern Mexico. Except for a few motorcycles and some dynamite, their work is done by hand inside the impossibly convoluted and inverted tunnels and passageways of the mines. There are times when it is difficult to tell which way is up. Like the first chapter, “Dark” is shot in color and follows the miners in live action as they chisel and burrow their way into the darkest passageways of the mine. In one of the final scenes, one young miner enters an underground pool and emerges in a chasm. He watches in awe as thousands of bats leave into the coming night. He is a man (or god?) literally emerging from the bowels of the Earth.
One shot links “Dark” and preceding section of black and white framings. A drone approaches a gigantic crater, slowly makes its way over the rim, and descends toward the crater floor to an ovoid landform that resembles an eye—perhaps an ancient eye of an Aztec god? —or even, maybe, a vagina, a birth canal from the world of gods to the world of men.
The strands of mythology and history pulled together by the present-day labors of these peoples using age-old methods not only links the past and the present, but the heritage, history, and regard for the ancestors who trod the land before them. Gods of Mexico not only taps into the enigma behind the land and the people of this great nation but causes its viewers to reconsider their own place in the world, in its history, and in its mystery.
Gods of Mexico is a like a dream, beautiful, hypnotic, and haunting. Like the land, it reveals little about itself. It revels in the enduring mystery of the bond between the people and their place in this world. You can still see it in the beautiful Avalon Theater at The Milwaukee Film Festival.