Emiliano Zapata (1970)
This is the story of a man, Emiliano Zapata, and of a revolution, the Mexican Revolution.
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Very well executed
Fantastic!
While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.
Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.
The film depicts Emiliano Zapata in a fair light, with a balance between a man driven by his passion for the revolution, yet at the same time sympathetic to the needs of those around him. The director tends to favour long periods of silence, which adds to the mounting tensions of the revolutionary battles. On the negative side, these silent moments sometimes make it difficult to concentrate on the film. At points there is some confusion with the characters, and the director seems to presume a prior knowledge of the Mexican revolution. On the whole, the brutality, betrayal and sadness of living through a revolution are portrayed with true respect to all involved.
The film portrays gory accounts of the suffering during the Mexican Revolution and is a good representation of the Revolution from Zapata's point of view, The peasants ordeals are realistic and the music used during crucial parts of the film are extremely effective. personally I found it to be a one sided portrayalof the Revolution, as it concentrated on Zapata. However it contained ample information about his life and the uprising of the peasants. As an old film by now, it still contained an interesting plot line and it was quite entertaining to watch. For people studying or interested in the Mexican Revolution I would recommend this film as it is quite factual and show the highlights of Emiliano Zapata's life as well as his day to day life.
Antonio Aguilar,the producer and star of this movie hire as director of this "superproduction" at the young director Felipe Cazals,who had only made independent good movies and in this his firs commercial one he failed in giving coherence to the script written by Aguilar himself and his usual director Mario Hernandez who could have given to the movie at least a bit less solemnity and may be also he could have made Aguilar sing at least a song,because this is the only movie I have seen in which Aguilar doesn't sing