It serves no purpose to denigrate this film just because it seems variously offensive to accepted cinematographic standards. After the first few minutes you sense no grand design or deliberate ethic, nor anything more than the basics: a kind of rough-hewn sporadic glimpse into life inside a forgettable time and place that somehow touches us closely whether we like it or not. Ugliness, banality, and evil are set against transcendent virtues like so many bits of straw in the wind. One "ascends" (Ascension) out of the canyon into which one has gone seeking death only to find it on the open plain. Irony demands nothing less. Innocence is an illusion coexisting with menacing deviance.
I think the title suggests something zen-like. Surely an obscure village in central Mexico is about as remote from anything Japanese as one may find. As for the lack of charm, I find it charming. Blurry film shots are all the more challenging for their indifference to sophistication.
Watch it with a degree of patience and indulgence. Nobody's perfect.
I think the title suggests something zen-like. Surely an obscure village in central Mexico is about as remote from anything Japanese as one may find. As for the lack of charm, I find it charming. Blurry film shots are all the more challenging for their indifference to sophistication.
Watch it with a degree of patience and indulgence. Nobody's perfect.