Cabeza de Vaca (film)

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Movie
Original title Cabeza de Vaca
Country of production Mexico
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1991
length 112 minutes
Rod
Director Nicolás Echevarría
script Nicolás Echevarría
Guillermo Sheridan
production Bertha Navarro
music Mario Lavista
camera Guillermo Navarro
cut Rafael Castanedo
occupation

Cabeza de Vaca is a Mexican biopic from the year 1991 . The historical film directed by Nicolás Echevarría tells a part of the life of the conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca . In Germany it is also known under the title The Adventures of Cabeza de Vaca .

action

The Spanish conqueror Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca lived around 1490 to 1557 and was a member of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition , which was crushed by the Indians of Florida after they went ashore in what is now Tampa Bay .

Cabeza de Vaca and a small group of men are able to save themselves from the attacks of the Indians by building five barges and thus fleeing the country. With these barges they sail west along the coast of today's Florida, past the mouth of the Mississippi , with the destination Mexico . But on the coast of Texas , on today's island of Galveston , the conquistadors' voyage ended in 1528. After initially good treatment, the Indians killed most of the starved Spaniards and took the rest of the crew prisoner. Cabeza de Vaca is given as a slave to a medicine man and learns his craft. After years of imprisonment, he meets the last survivors of the expedition. The four men decide to flee together and a road movie begins at a time when there were no roads. This was the beginning of the first European crossing of the American continent. The small group lives with various Indian tribes and Cabeza de Vaca makes ends meet as a healer. Soon he can show actual healing successes and so he and his companions are highly regarded by the Indians as holy men and are accompanied by many people on their way to the west. The film ends in 1536 with the group's arrival in Culiacan , on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

background

The film was based on the book The Shipwrecks of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca from 1542. The style of the film alternates between different modes: On the one hand there are direct, almost documentary sequences, on the other hand Nicolás Echevarría sometimes uses hallucinatory images to describe the transformation of the conquistador into a true healer, which stylistically ties in with Luis Buñuel . The film takes a post-colonial approach in that it breaks up the chronology of the narrative as well as the geographical structure, so that a feeling of spatial proximity to distant areas is created. On the one hand, Cabeza de Vaca's disorientation is shown, on the other hand, this landscape also corresponds to the mental state of the protagonist. The film often refers to a very emotional level, the faces of crying characters are often shown in close-up. This refers to the exchange of "dangerous emotions" between the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca and indigenous people, whereby the latter approaches them. This rapprochement is thwarted in the final scene, in which indigenous slaves, under the guidance of a Spanish drummer, carry a very large Christian symbol on their shoulders through a barren desert landscape. Towards the end of the film, when the contact with the Spaniards becomes foreseeable, the latter also attacks the truthfulness of the reference text. In a conversation with one of the companions with Cabeza de Vaca, it is noted by him that de Vaca should no longer talk about magic in front of the Spaniards.

Cabeza de Vaca was shown in the 1991 Berlinale competition . The TV title was "The Adventures of the Cabeza de Vaca".

There is a 95-minute version of the originally 112-minute film, in which the cannibal scenes at the torture stake near the Blue Amazons, which were not supported by Cabeza de Vaca's report and which are accordingly controversial among critics, have been cut out.

criticism

“Characterized by humanistic commitment, the film shows the problem of an inculturation process, whereby in the metaphorical closing sequence it still regards the cross of Christianity as a sign of exploitation and oppression. It impresses with its mixture of documentary-looking film material and a surreal narrative form that is based on the magical-animistic way of thinking of the Indians. "

- Lexicon of international film

literature

  • Markus Klaus Schäffauer: Images of the unspeakable: Cabeza de Vaca. In: Ute Fendler, Monika Wehrheim (Ed.): Discovery, Conquest, Staging. Cinematic versions of the colonial history of Latin America and Africa. Martin Meidenbauer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89975-598-5 , pp. 101-115.
  • Louis Kirk McAuley: "What's Love Got to Do with It?". Sympathy, Antipathy, and the Unsettling of Colonial American History in Film. In: Robert A. Rosenstone & Constantin Parvulescu (Eds.), A Companion to the Historical Film . Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA 2013, ISBN 978-1-4443-3724-2 , pp. 513-539.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louis Kirk McAuley: "What's Love Got to Do with It?" Sympathy, Antipathy, and the Unsettling of Colonial American History in Film. In: Robert A. Rosenstone & Constantin Parvulescu (Eds.), A Companion to the Historical Film . Wiley-Blackwell, Malden MA 2013, pp. 513-539, 523.
  2. ↑ Louis Kirk McAuley: "What's Love Got to Do with It?" Sympathy, Antipathy, and the Unsettling of Colonial American History in Film. , Pp. 524-6.
  3. ↑ Louis Kirk McAuley: "What's Love Got to Do with It?" Sympathy, Antipathy, and the Unsettling of Colonial American History in Film. , P. 527f.
  4. ↑ cf. Schäffauer: Images of the unspeakable: Cabeza de Vaca. In: Fendler, Wehrheim (Ed.): Discovery, Conquest, Staging. 2007, pp. 101–115, pp. 103 ff.
  5. ↑ Cabeza de Vaca in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used , accessed on April 27, 2012