Film ReviewsIxcanul
Oct 13, 2016 Anchorage Press
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Director Jayro Bustamante erupts onto the scene and brings forth the Guatemalan film Ixcanul (from the Mayan word for volcano), which he delivers with graceful intimacy and a quiet force that builds and builds. Bustamante stumbled upon Ixcanul when he met Maria, a Kaqchikel woman who told him her story, which unfortunately is that of many indigenous Guatemalan women. Bustamante had a duty to tell it, honoring the women's experiences with abuse of power and the tightly woven Mayan communities that must endure injustices at every turn.
Bustamante creates a narrative based on real events but that rests on a solid foundation of history, culture, myth and language. Kaqchikel are one of the surviving Mayan people in the central highlands of Guatemala. Ixcanul is shot at the base of an active volcano on Bustamante's family's coffee plantation and is spoken almost completely in Mayan with some Spanish sprinkled in. The dark earth steams, and as everyone lives and works at in the luscious skirts of Ixcanul they are aware that they're at the mercy of the volcano. Understanding of their relationship to the environment, and in an almost magical trance, the coffee pickers sing a lullaby as they work to keep Ixcanul in a slumber state, so they may have another day to work and live. Scenes like this make Ixcanul not just beautiful, but truly insightful.
Casting for the film was difficult at first because Guatemala has a rather depressed cinematic industry and Kaqchikel actors are few and far between. When Bustamante first sat at a marketplace with a sign that said "casting" no one showed up, but when he changed the sign to read "work" then folks came around. María Telón plays Juana, the young Maria's mother, matriarch and mediator between her daughter and her husband, Manuel (Manuel Antún). Maria is played by María Mercedes Coroy, a close up of her wide, brown face, beautifully sculpted and reaching back as far back as the Popol Vuh opens the film and instantly sets up a series of parallels that speak to the history of Mayan people, and especially Mayan women in current times.
The character of the young Maria is the center of the story, and is a parallel to Ixcanul itself. Bustamante captures the awakening of Maria in a way that sets aside Western hang-ups on morality and Christian judgements. Maria's relationship with her environment and her own sexuality is delicate and enticing-like many people experience when no one is watching. Bustamante engages in drawing parallels that show a deep understanding of the language as it relates to culture. The Popol Vuh, a pre-Columbian history of the Quiche, a Mayan group neighboring and related to the Kaqchikel, flowed for thousands of years; fluid in ideas as people were geographically and in time, from what is now Mexico to Central America; from the time after the Olmecs to today. But, in the 1700s, the Popol Vuh was written down by a Westerner, thus cementing it in time. The one good thing that has come of that is that recent linguistic studies by Mexican and Guatemalan linguists demonstrate how deep the concept of parallelism exists in Mayan culture today, and more specifically in language.
The idea of parallels is expanded to be able to understand a way of thinking, in this way parallels can be two identical things, or those that are parallel by synonym, or antithetic, associative, inverted, grammatical, etc. This is integral to understanding the film because Ixcanul is not just a noun-volcano, it is a concept, "Ixcanul" is also a volcanic force that is parallel to the force within Maria, be it her child, her mother or herself. As the film comes full circle, and things appear to go back to the beginning, Maria and the viewers know better, because Ixcanul is awake and it can erupt at any moment.
Ixcancul shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, October 17 at 8:15 p.m.
Bustamante creates a narrative based on real events but that rests on a solid foundation of history, culture, myth and language. Kaqchikel are one of the surviving Mayan people in the central highlands of Guatemala. Ixcanul is shot at the base of an active volcano on Bustamante's family's coffee plantation and is spoken almost completely in Mayan with some Spanish sprinkled in. The dark earth steams, and as everyone lives and works at in the luscious skirts of Ixcanul they are aware that they're at the mercy of the volcano. Understanding of their relationship to the environment, and in an almost magical trance, the coffee pickers sing a lullaby as they work to keep Ixcanul in a slumber state, so they may have another day to work and live. Scenes like this make Ixcanul not just beautiful, but truly insightful.
Casting for the film was difficult at first because Guatemala has a rather depressed cinematic industry and Kaqchikel actors are few and far between. When Bustamante first sat at a marketplace with a sign that said "casting" no one showed up, but when he changed the sign to read "work" then folks came around. María Telón plays Juana, the young Maria's mother, matriarch and mediator between her daughter and her husband, Manuel (Manuel Antún). Maria is played by María Mercedes Coroy, a close up of her wide, brown face, beautifully sculpted and reaching back as far back as the Popol Vuh opens the film and instantly sets up a series of parallels that speak to the history of Mayan people, and especially Mayan women in current times.
The character of the young Maria is the center of the story, and is a parallel to Ixcanul itself. Bustamante captures the awakening of Maria in a way that sets aside Western hang-ups on morality and Christian judgements. Maria's relationship with her environment and her own sexuality is delicate and enticing-like many people experience when no one is watching. Bustamante engages in drawing parallels that show a deep understanding of the language as it relates to culture. The Popol Vuh, a pre-Columbian history of the Quiche, a Mayan group neighboring and related to the Kaqchikel, flowed for thousands of years; fluid in ideas as people were geographically and in time, from what is now Mexico to Central America; from the time after the Olmecs to today. But, in the 1700s, the Popol Vuh was written down by a Westerner, thus cementing it in time. The one good thing that has come of that is that recent linguistic studies by Mexican and Guatemalan linguists demonstrate how deep the concept of parallelism exists in Mayan culture today, and more specifically in language.
The idea of parallels is expanded to be able to understand a way of thinking, in this way parallels can be two identical things, or those that are parallel by synonym, or antithetic, associative, inverted, grammatical, etc. This is integral to understanding the film because Ixcanul is not just a noun-volcano, it is a concept, "Ixcanul" is also a volcanic force that is parallel to the force within Maria, be it her child, her mother or herself. As the film comes full circle, and things appear to go back to the beginning, Maria and the viewers know better, because Ixcanul is awake and it can erupt at any moment.
Ixcancul shows at Bear Tooth on Monday, October 17 at 8:15 p.m.