Title: Maria Full of Grace
Grade: B-
Times Viewed: 1
Date Reviewed: 09/06/04
After watching the trailer for this movie, I was very excited to go see it. And it was good. But it was nowhere near my expectations for it, even more so because I feel it easily could have been, except for one fundamental mistake made by the director: he compromised between making a documentary and making a serious dramatic film, and he lost on both fronts.
A documentary is a work which seeks to increase public awareness of some situation or some person’s actions and thoughts. As such, it must be firmly based on considerable factual material, whether this be in the form of interviews, papers, or whatever. It must not distort facts for convenience’s sake, and must avoid systematically subverting facts to fit a bias (to say that it should not have bias is an incorrect statement, as all works produced by someone have, and should have, a bias. A truly unbiased work could only be done by someone who has absolutely no care for his subject matter, and thus someone who should definitely not be making the work). In order to do this, documentaries usually do not focus on a particular case for fear of seeming unduly influenced by what might be an exceptional case. While this is the “right” thing to do in terms of academic honesty, the film can often suffer as a result of increasing the distance between the audience and the subject matter.
A dramatic film, on the other hand, is a work which seeks not (primarily) to educate, but to arouse public emotion, whether it be ire at some tragic situation, love for some unknown person’s contributions, or whatever. As such, these films do focus on a particular case, so as to make the material more immediate, more endearing to the audience. It is understood that they can take some liberties with facts and situations, but there’s an acceptable limit on how much is allowed. A fire can become a inferno, but not a holocaust.
Maria Full of Grace tries to be both at once, and fails at both. It is obviously not a documentary (despite, or rather, as evidenced by the tagline of “based on a 1,000 true stories”), and thus is not to be taken as one. However, the director seems particularly afraid to let it become a dramatic film. This, despite the fact that he has all the resources available to make it one, and a superb one at that–great actors, a talented cinematographer, etc. However, he chooses to take the “typical case,” I’m assuming so as to make the film more believable. Every situation where he has the option of raising the tension, increasing the drama, more tightly gripping the audience, he lets it go–consciously. I don’t believe it’s accidental because he seems to have too much skill to not realize what is happening. And this takes a lot of the punch out of the movie. The loss of accuracy of the “typical case” that he would have suffered by taking this route would have been more than compensated by the immense power the film would have packed.
Despite all this, it is still a well-made movie, and as I have mentioned already, the acting is excellent. Catalina Moreno gives a convincing performance, as do the supporting cast. There is still sufficient drama to keep the film interesting, although unfortunately there are very few scenes that do not directly advance the plot. Well worth the (relatively short, at 100 mins) time that you will put into this film, I would definitely recommend it especially to those who have no idea about the subject matter of the film. I look forward to the director’s next work (and also Moreno’s).
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