SIN
NOMBRE
by
Howard Schumann
In Sin Nombre, first-time writer-director
31-year-old Cary Joji Fukanaga has crafted a uniquely moving film experience
that dramatizes with authenticity the drive among the poor in Latin
America to pull up roots and seek a better life in the U.S. Transcending
genres and styles, Sin Nombre, translated "without a name,"
is performed by mostly non-professional local actors whose weathered
faces mirror the harsh realities of their life. The film is shot by
cinematographer Adriano Goldman with 35mm film rather than the digital
video which is today’s norm, and avoids stylistic clichés
such as hand-held cameras and dizzier-than-thou fast cutting.
Opening in
Tapachula in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico, with a saturated
color palette of deep red and orange, the trajectory of this low-budget
but beautifully shot thriller follows two parallel threads that meet
in the middle. It begins with the initiation of a new member into the
Mara Salvatrucha gang, in this case, a twelve-year-old boy called Smiley
(Kristyan Ferrer) who has been recruited into the gang by young Willy,
aka Casper (Edgar Flores). Smiley must endure a gang ritual where he
is thrown to the ground and kicked and beaten thirteen times to prove
his toughness. As if that is not enough, the pre-teen is then forced
to shoot a prisoner from the Chavalas, a rival gang. Breaking the rules,
Willy takes Smiley with him to meet his secret girlfriend Martha Marlene
(Diana Garcia) but the clandestine meeting ends when sadistic gang leader
Lil’ Mago (Tenoch Huerta Mejia) finds out about it and tries to
rape her.
In the second thread, Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teenager,
is reunited with her father and decides to join him and her uncle on
a perilous journey to New Jersey to meet other family members. In a
powerful scene, they join other immigrants at a train crossing and then
climb to the top of the railroad car of a passing train to begin the
journey. One of the many dangers they face is that of being robbed by
gangs or other poor Latinos who think they must have huge sums of money.
In this case,
the robbers are Casper and Smiley who have been ordered to join Lil’
Mago. When the leader tries to rape Sayra, however, Casper takes action
which ensures that his future and that of Sayra will be inextricably
linked. To reach the U.S., Sayra and Willy, now drawn together out of
mutual need and attraction, have to overcome the network of covert operatives
employed by the Mara gang, the danger of the border patrols, and the
ordinary Mexicans who throw rocks at them and put their journey in peril.
Powerful performances by Gaitan and Flores create an electric chemistry
that wraps our hearts around their struggle to find release from their
troubled past.
Winner of
awards for directing and cinematography at Sundance, Sin Nombre
has been attacked by some critics because it is a story about the truth
of poor people’s lives wrapped in a conventional framework. In
my view, that is precisely what gives the film its strength. It is not
an easy task for any immigrant who wants to make it to America, and
Sin Nombre alerts us to the dangers as well as the opportunities.
It succeeds not only as education but as theater, allowing the viewer
not only to understand the perils illegal immigrants face but to relate
emotionally to them as human beings.
Fukanaga
has not been a criminal or an immigrant but knows full well that the
common thread existing among all people is that of being able to dream
of a new day for themselves and the people they love. He spent two years
doing research among the Mara Salvatrucha gang based in Mexico and Los
Angeles, and in riding on the top of freight cars with Honduran and
Salvadorean immigrants headed towards the U.S. border. The result is
both deeply moving in its poetry and disturbing in its violence, a film
of heartbreaking sadness but also one of joy and redemption, one of
the best so far of 2009.
©2009 Howard Schumann
CineScene
