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The Immortal review
:. Director: Mercedes Moncada RodrIguez
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:20
:. Year: 2005
:. Country: Nicaragua, Mexico, Spain
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Fueled with metaphors and a strong dose of mise-en-scene, El Inmortal — the name of a symbolic truck used as a narrative thread for this story — brings light to the ravages of the Nicaraguan war between the Contras and the Sandinistas, most particularly aiming at exploring its consequences on the family core.
Writer/Director Mercedes Moncada RodrIguez brings us to a remote village to introduce us to a family whose emotional scars are still vivid and is a paradigm for every Nicaraguan family who suffered from this conflict. We meet two brothers who fought on opposite sides, a sister who joined the contras as a teenager and became a "soldier's girl" with all the implications that it involves, an aunt who suffers from mental illness and a mom who tries to put the family pieces back together.
While, as a European, I was vaguely aware of that war, this documentary creates awareness about a somewhat forgotten part of the world. If RodrIguez certainly succeeds at showing the consequences of war at a family unit level, which is the premise here, she however fails to give a proper introduction about this conflict, thus leaving spectators like me in a historic and political blur. I can certainly sense that she doesn't want to use her filmmaker role as a moral judge, but by not giving enough background, this documentary seems to assume we are all fully aware of the situation, which at an international level isn't the case. This leaves us with a series of portraits of shattered siblings, a theme that has already been brushed many times in American civil war movies.
But the main issue here — which some might consider a strength — is RodrIguez's artistic choice to tell this story, an aesthetic direction which clashes with its subject by visually exploiting it. RodrIguez shows great talent as a director with a strong sense for cinematography and mise-en-scene, but here her visual abilities tend to envelop a serious subject into an action film format. Her fast cuts, impressive camera moves as well her use of saturated colors seem to suffer from a Man On Fire syndrome, showing an exotic third world location through an edgy look, which is the signature of Tony Scott and, to an extent, of Michael Bay. While it certainly gives style to action flicks, here it undermines its subject, somewhat vulgarizing it. I was also bothered by several staged scenes, like the one where a character throws stones in the river, which are supposed to bring reflection but instead give a Hollywood feel to the ensemble. As for the use of the truck, a symbol of the war with a beast-like aura, it looks like a heavy-handed trick that doesn't add anything to the story.
RodrIguez's strong directing skills weaken the impact of her story, a fatal flaw for a documentary, and we'd rather look forward to her next work, hopefully a work of fiction.
Fred Thom
 Documentary Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Documentary Reviews: 2012 - present
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