The fight for freedom in the Spanish Civil War 1936, through the eyes of a young man from Liverpool, England. Powerful and brilliant. Another gem from the great social director Loach who approaches it in a semi-documentary style.
Have any of you seen this film, or read a book on it?
It is all pretty deep and highly complex stuff, for sure, but if you are looking to get your teeth into some serious stuff about Spain's more recent political history, this would be a good place to start, but like I said, it is heavy stuff, but insanely interesting to go through, and besides, if you can sit through a dozen episodes of "Cuéntame" you can read this lot and enjoy it.
I saw the movie a few years back and thought it was well done (particularly the parts shot in Spain; less-so the modern day parts). The perspective is similar to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, with the view of all of the infighting between various factions and disillusionment of the idealistic outsider.
And it was cool seeing Iciar Bollaín (a good director in her own right) as an actress.
Posts: 1070 | Location: Madrid | Registered: 10 December 2002
Thanks, mariposita, I agree, seeing Iciar Bollaín was certainly cool indeed, good director as you say, and actress too.
Some of the scenes are grippingly realistic, and really impact on the senses, you see exactly how it would have been when they grabbed hold of a priest, harass him, abuse him, and finally shoot him dead, and that's exactly what happened to a lot of people, many quite innocent, and that is exactly what they did to Federico Garcia Lorca, grabbed him, brutalized him, dragged him into a field and shot him dead. So from that point of view the film can be a little scary, but as you say the realism of the scenes in Spain is pretty good.
All together, the whole sickeningly sad episode in Spain's history, was pretty bloody horrific, and not helped by all the external interference by other sick lunatics with their grossly fanatical ideas around the world either. But I guess, at the end of the day, we (some of us, who can stomach it) have to look at it, closely, and try to learn something from it, in order to (hopefully) prevent anything like it from happening ever again.
Saludos .
Posts: 696 | Location: Santander | Registered: 11 August 2003
