El Mariachi
Written & Directed by: Robert Rodriguez
If you haven't heard of this movie before, this is a Spanish action movie made in 1992, by a 23-year old guy with 7000$. The film went to Sundance and won the Audience Award, it eventually got picked up by Colombia who invested about 200,000$ on mixing the sound and other post production work and the film ended up collecting about 2mn $. This is not even a single location film or a found footage horror film, it is a gangster action film. He wrote a book 'Rebel without a crew' about his experiences while shooting the film.
The premise of a film is a simple and interesting one, a mix up which is being extensively used in mainstream Indian cinema to create humor. Now after watching 4k digital content with that high dynamic range, it is difficult to hold your attention on the film unless you know it is made on 7000$ which holds it up for you. But, back then when the Indie scene was so prominent in Hollywood, this would've been an interesting film. 90s was the time, when filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, Steven Soderberg had their debuts with independent films.
There are editing glitches, continuity errors and out of sync dialogue but all of that gets forgiven now just because of the fact that the voice behind this film is authentic and promising. This feels like a pitch film to a studio to get a bigger film signed, but the mere fact that it was shot on such a low budget feels like a slap saying that you too could've done it but there is someone out there who just made it. He didn't fear the film looking amateur, the film not working. He just made it and I think that's what works in favor of the film, the mere conviction with which it is made.
No comments:
Post a Comment