Film Reviews

Machuca

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Ariel Mateluna
• Details: Chile / 120 mins (15s).

Chile, 1973. Set against the backdrop of the CIA-sponsored coup that replaced Salvador Allende's democratically-elected government with Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, Machuca is a rites-of-passage tale that filters its events through the eyes of 11-year-old Gonzalo (Quer). Through attending a posh Catholic school where an American priest (Malbran) encourages poor kids from the shanty towns to attend, Gonzalo befriends the impoverished Pedro (Mateluna), and the pair embark on the usual adolescent japes while slowly becoming aware of the dark forces at work in their country. Comparable to John Boorman's Land of Hope and Glory, Machuca is a film that burns with a political conviction that in its intensity threatens to overshadow the human interest angle of how ideologies impact on ordinary human beings. But that's a minor – and to these eyes positive - caveat. Beautifully shot with a grainy, gritty feel that captures the decline of hope and faith, Wood's film is perfectly cast, with Quer and Mateluna making for an engaging pair. Without ever resorting to histrionics, Wood conveys the awful plight of a country destroyed from within, drawing the audience into a web of despair and hopelessness in order to maximise the film's emotional punch. Gripping stuff.

Review by Declan Burke