June 27, 2006
nacho libre
For the film's climax — after Nacho has quit the orphanage to triumph or die — the orphans, led by Sister Penelope Cruz's Twin Sister, show up just before he must battle the fearsome Ramses, each wearing little versions of Nacho's luchador masca. Sister Sister does not, because she is "pretty."
Anyway, okay, we get it. I am Spartacus. O Captain my captain! I am gay. I am V. I am Nacho. We're living the microera when this scene has leapt from being a trope to a cliché, practically a genre.
Given that such collective identifications are the absolute first step of any differential politics, Hollywood's presentation of this device as a political end (always at the end of the film, natch), as a victory rather than a basic banality, wavers between the facile and the mystificatory. But it's Hollywood, Jake — one would be foolish to expect more. What aggravates is how it just doesn't make for a very good movie; it's always now a tacked-on "value," in the same way that Jack Black cavorting like a seal and parodying rock singing are familar tails arbitrarily pinned to this film's donkey.
What Spartacus understood about this device is that it renders each film that uses it as a prequel. And who the fuck would want want to see the real action of Nacho Libre: Revolucíon, wherein the collectivized orphans in their identical and anoymizing masks take it to the streets and villages of Mexico against the corporo-thugs and corrupt officials for whom Ramses explicitly stands?
Especially when that movie doesn't need to be made, as Mexico has been living it for a dozen years.
Posted by jane at June 27, 2006 07:59 PM | TrackBack