Rating: 
Summary: Why this fiction?
Review: The work on which this is based is not fiction, and the non-fiction is far more interesting than this strange, allegorical tale essentially unrelated to fact. (In reply to Bruce Kendall's review, I would like to explain that I submitted three, not two, reviews; but I did so by mistake, not to influence the overall rating. In fact, long before I read Kendall's review, I wrote to Amazon to ask that two of the three be deleted. So far, that has not happened. My main point is that the film is fiction, while the book is not. Customers deserve to know this. Historians have studied Cabeza de Vaca's account very carefully to understand all that they can from it: where exactly his wanderings took him, which native tribes he writes about, and many other details. A excellent film could be made without any invention, telling the story just as the man himself would want it told, as far as can be ascertained from his writing.)
Rating: 
Summary: A remake might be needed.
Review: This film might not be for everyone - it moves rather slowly, it has a lot of almost silent and slow moments, and it has the main character babbling, gasping, wheezing, and screaming like an emaciated madman who can't make heads or tails of the world around him in a sad plea for some sort of respite salvation. In fact, the main character seems to do this almost constantly throughout the film... There isn't much profound dialogue; much of what we do understand is done through observation of how the characters in the film interact as if we ourselves are experiencing the cultures Cabeza de Vaca encounters en route to find a way home. The best point of the film is just that: we can see the lives of three or four distinctly different indigenous peoples, how they lived, how they spoke, and how they developed their respectively unique societies. The film can be hard to follow. One may even be lost as to what the point of the whole film is about, but the view of native America prior to foreign enslavement and destruction is absolutely rewarding and at times even breathtaking.This is not the best assembled digital video disc on the planet with a full-screen format video and subtitles one cannot remove because they are a part of the original international film copy. The cutting of the film is clearly mid-80's Latin-American with poor mono audio which at times can make the dialogue even harder to follow. They ought to remake the film in entirety if not put out a better package of the original film.
Rating:
Summary: Unrecognizable fiction
Review: This movie has essentially nothing to do with the real Cabeza de Vaca. Buy and read the book, in Spanish if you can, or in English translation -- for example, ISBN 082630656X. It is no exaggeration to call his true story an epic, fascinating for those who trouble to understand what he is saying in it, and deeply meaningful. It is one of the great neglected masterpieces of eyewitness history. The author was not writing fiction in the slightest, but an account as truthful as his memory allowed, of his wanderings and struggle to survive for eight years in the unknown interior of America, among natives whose struggle to survive was generally as desperate as his own. By contrast, this movie is absurd fiction, apparently influenced by politically correct revisionism, containing hardly a hint of Cabeza de Vaca's sustaining Christian faith as anything positive. Although it would be possible to make a great
movie on the subject, this movie is not it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Mexican history and courage in only one hour and half
Review: You have to see it!!!!! Nothing could compare with the amazing actor's performance and locations. If you want to know how mexican life was in the earlies 1500's before the conquest you must not miss it.
|
