Stometer
Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Fatma Suarez
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
axapvov
Extremely few films approach the immigration issue from the immigrants´point of view. I personally can only think of "America, America" and the more recent "Sin Nombre", which is basically "El Norte" made twenty-something years later. This singularity is important. Film is unfortunately expensive, very expensive. It´s sad how many different visions get lost because of money issues. Therefore the accomplishment of Gregory Nava and his crew is a small miracle. It really does give a voice to the voiceless.The film itself is a love letter to countless people who probably went through worse than the main characters. A lot them died along the way, if not before getting out of Guatemala. The real life tragedy is tough and "El Norte" does a great job not falling into angrier storytelling. It´s heartfelt but full of composure. The most distressing moments are inevitable. On plenty of occasions the film could have gone for easier dramatic effects but it never does. Instead it protects its characters with a noticeable loving hand letting the core of the issue speak for itself. The simplicity enlarges the story, it has traits of a classic tragedy. It whispers delicately its claim and the result speaks loud. We see the world through the eyes of innocence and hope without stumbling.In short, it´s a unique, important film still relevant today; a restrained, heartfelt testament to all the disadvantaged people in the world.
The_late_Buddy_Ryan
Low-budget epic from '83 about two ethnic Mayan refugees from the highlands of Guatemala who end up in East LA. Seems dated now, but it's still quite watchable: nowadays our protagonists would prob'ly qualify as asylum seekers, since they're fleeing from ruthless landlords and genocidal death squads in their (otherwise idyllic) mountain village. The two leads, both born in Mexico City, don't seem much like "indios," but they're quite appealing. The journey through Mexico is mostly played for laughs—much is made of the Mexican propensity for adding obscene phrases like "de la chingada" to every utterance, and a half-hearted mugger at the border is easily dispatched with a well-placed kick. After one more hideous obstacle (difficult to film convincingly with such slender resources), they're in El Norte… Interesting that the native-born "pochos" (English-speaking Chicanos, including Trinidad Silva, the dude that played Jesus Rodriguez on "Hill Street Blues") tend to be portrayed as shifty and treacherous; the final scenes in SoCal alternate gentle social satire and melodrama in a kind of Dickensian way that I found quite involving. W/d director Gregory Nava went on to direct mainstream fare like "Selena"; an earlier film, an Héloïse and Abélard thing called "The Confessions of Amans" set in medieval Spain (and using leftover costumes from "El Cid"!), sounds like it might be more interesting. PS—Soundtrack weirdly mingles Guatemalan folk instruments with bombastic classical chestnuts… What's Mahler's Fourth doing in there!?!?
hddu10-819-37458
I've never been surprised that this masterpiece and work of art has never truly received the recognition it deserves. Although it was stylized and even a bit anachronistic for the 80's, it came out during a period when to mention the US-sponsored violence in Central America was on-par with sympathizing with Communism. The film tread very lightly on this subject matter, and instead focused on the characters fleeing from their homeland in terms of their own personal situation-- it didn't matter WHY the violence was happening, just that it was happening to them...and they needed to find a way out of it. The blurring of fantasy and reality brought the viewer inside the perceptions and minds of the characters. My only critique is the negative portrayal of Mexicans bordered on shallow, and really took away what could have been an extremely unbiased work of art.
circlevision91
I wrote this review after viewing the film in my Spanish class. I turned this into the teacher for extra credit.El Norte, the north. A film made under a limited budget and by a director with limited talents. No offense to the director or actors, who obviously but their heart into the story, but directors of the 1920s silent era have managed to pull off more genius and drive emotions deep into the human soul better than this movie has ever done. Now, I don't expect everyone to be a Cecil B. DeMille or a Steven Spielberg, but this director needs to take a crash course in cinematography.I find what ruined it was self-indulgent directing. Not so much the story or the meaning, but the direction itself. The close-ups weren't saved for dramatic effect, and he did not take advantage of them at the appropriate time. The music was ill-chosen. A new score may not have been available, but better soundtracks could obviously have been used in place. Nothing ruins a potentially breathtaking scene like music that comes straight out of a commercial.Now, I realize the whole point behind the story; that illegal immigrants suffer a lot of trauma when trying to cross the border. I'm for helping everyone achieve the American Dream as much as the next guy, but the way they go about it was ill-advised. Sure, if they went through customs there would be a lot of bureaucracy and papers to fill out, as well as years before one became a citizen, but it would have saved them a lot of time, stress, and even their lives Whether or not the filmmakers wanted to accomplish instilling pro illegal-immigration theories is not relevant, and that does not detract from the film's potential entertainment value. When looking at it from an entertainment standpoint, it really is a moving film. No matter what is ruined by directing and unnatural camera angles and sloppy acting, there still is a storyline behind the mess. Oppressive regimes, murdered parents, cheating trail guides, selfish employers, friendly comrades… it's all in there. It may not be Gone with the Wind, but there is a heart in the midst of it all.The hodge-podge of languages (Mayan, Spanish, and English) made it confusing. Who was who? What was what? I started to shift in my seat from discomfort. Then there were the seemingly random additions, like the voices that just spontaneously began speaking from seemingly no where, and without utilizing "oil on the lenses" or "fog". It made it too hard to distinguish reality from fantasy in the film. Then there was the strange head hanging from a tree in the final cut of the film; what was the point of that? Whose head was it? Films of the foreign market range from masterpieces to be placed on the shelf beside Casablanca and My Fair Lady to works of utter mediocrity. This film, unfortunately, is dangling on the fringe of that character. What saves it is the heart that the film holds in its grasp, underneath all the swearing and bad makeup. The 80s hairstyles and cars are evident, as are those sprinklers and washing machines that could only be found in a junkyard nowadays. The movie is dated, has some entertainment value, but could have so much more going for it if the director paid attention to detail instead of trying to make an "arty picture."
