MOVIE REVIEW
INNOCENT VOICES
Here is the trailer from Youtube:
This award-winning film is an intense, riveting, beautifully filmed drama about an 11-year-old boy trying to survive in El Salvador with his family, during the war which took place from 1980-1992. After the war was over, Oscar Torres returned to script and film his story.
The kids in the film go to school every day and try to live and maintain their family lives amid frequent gunfire, bullets raining down on them on an almost-daily basis. The army regularly invades the school in order to round up 12 year old boys, taking them into service. Oscar Torres' name in the film is 'Chava', and he is 11, soon to turn 12. He lives in a shanty town with his mother, sister and young brother. His father left for good several years before, to go to live in the USA, and his uncle has joined the nearby but hidden guerrilla army who fight the soldiers. During a brief visit, his uncle tells Chava to come and join the guerrillas before he is conscripted into the hated regular army. Eventually Chava does so, but with terrible consequences.
The actors in this movie are amazingly talented. Leonor Varela plays Chava's mother, Daniel Jimenez Cacho is the town's rebellious priest, and both brave souls are trying to hold their families/parishes together under the most unbearably impossible circumstances. Carlos Padilla, who plays Chava, creates a beautifully emotional, heartbreaking performance. Apparently Oscar Torres (the real Chava) who wrote the film and was on set during the filming, would break down and cry uncontrollably between takes.
On a side note, Daniel Jimenez Cacho is one of my favourite Latino actors. He played the lead role in one of my all-time favourite movies, 'Perder Es Cuestion de Metodo'.
Despite some of the most tragic events I've ever witnessed on film, the movie is well worth watching. For me it was an immensely rewarding experience. It actually does have a happy ending (sort of), even despite so many horrific events occurring during the film. I want to point out too, that this is not a bloody movie at all - while there are harrowing scenes, there is nothing gory or graphic. What this movie does more than anything is show the real victims of war, the innocent people whose lives are irreparably changed by events they cannot control, the useless, ridiculous wars that human beings perpetrate upon each other.
And here is a link to the Wiki Page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voces_inocentes
Here is the trailer from Youtube:
Click to viewThis award-winning film is an intense, riveting, beautifully filmed drama about an 11-year-old boy trying to survive in El Salvador with his family, during the war which took place from 1980-1992. After the war was over, Oscar Torres returned to script and film his story.
The kids in the film go to school every day and try to live and maintain their family lives amid frequent gunfire, bullets raining down on them on an almost-daily basis. The army regularly invades the school in order to round up 12 year old boys, taking them into service. Oscar Torres' name in the film is 'Chava', and he is 11, soon to turn 12. He lives in a shanty town with his mother, sister and young brother. His father left for good several years before, to go to live in the USA, and his uncle has joined the nearby but hidden guerrilla army who fight the soldiers. During a brief visit, his uncle tells Chava to come and join the guerrillas before he is conscripted into the hated regular army. Eventually Chava does so, but with terrible consequences.
The actors in this movie are amazingly talented. Leonor Varela plays Chava's mother, Daniel Jimenez Cacho is the town's rebellious priest, and both brave souls are trying to hold their families/parishes together under the most unbearably impossible circumstances. Carlos Padilla, who plays Chava, creates a beautifully emotional, heartbreaking performance. Apparently Oscar Torres (the real Chava) who wrote the film and was on set during the filming, would break down and cry uncontrollably between takes.
On a side note, Daniel Jimenez Cacho is one of my favourite Latino actors. He played the lead role in one of my all-time favourite movies, 'Perder Es Cuestion de Metodo'.
Despite some of the most tragic events I've ever witnessed on film, the movie is well worth watching. For me it was an immensely rewarding experience. It actually does have a happy ending (sort of), even despite so many horrific events occurring during the film. I want to point out too, that this is not a bloody movie at all - while there are harrowing scenes, there is nothing gory or graphic. What this movie does more than anything is show the real victims of war, the innocent people whose lives are irreparably changed by events they cannot control, the useless, ridiculous wars that human beings perpetrate upon each other.
And here is a link to the Wiki Page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voces_inocentes