The Violin (El Violin) (2006)
Average Rating: 7.3/10
Reviews Counted: 34
Fresh: 32 | Rotten: 2
Vargas makes a strong debut with The Violin, which features crisp photography, a poetic screenplay, and a breakthrough performance by Tavira.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 0
Vargas makes a strong debut with The Violin, which features crisp photography, a poetic screenplay, and a breakthrough performance by Tavira.
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Average Rating: 3.4/5
User Ratings: 15,907
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Movie Info
Filmmaker Francisco Vargas makes his feature-film debut with this expansion of his well-received short film detailing the struggle between the peasants and military in 1970s-era Mexico. Don Plutarco (Angel Tavira) is a dignified elder who, along with his son Genaro (Gerardo Taracena) and grandson Lucio (Mario Garibaldi), makes his living as a traveling musician. On the side, the trio secretly smuggles weapons and supplies to the freedom fighters who are bravely attempting to overthrow the
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Cast
-
Angel Tavira Maldonado
Don Plutarco Hidalgo -
Dagoberto Gama
The Captain -
Fermín Martínez
The Lieutenant -
Gerardo Taracena
Genaro -
Mario Garibaldi
Lucio
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All Critics (36) | Top Critics (10) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (2) | DVD (1)
The film from first-timer Francisco Vargas puts a human face on universal suffering. It is also about the power of music, as the title instrument saves (for a while anyway) three generations of peasant men in their roles as guerrilla fighters.
Top CriticLife-or-death matters are handled with compelling gravity.
A message this political has rarely been delivered in so poetic a form.
A slightly meandering build-up is saved by a second half that really cooks, with Vargas ratcheting up the tension by flirting with genre convention in order to deal with Plutarco's unconventional psychological stand-off with a malodorous Captain.
Shot in a silvery black and white that lends a photojournalistic effect, this is not an easy film to sit through. But it will be a tough one to forget if you do.
Tavira's acting is the high point of this suspenseful yet beautiful movie, which -- for a while at least -- proves that music can soothe the savage breast.
Perfect casting: the photogenic Ángel Tavira is a valuable find for writer/director Francisco Vargas
An impressive debut for Mexican writer and director Francisco Vargas.
You may not remember how exactly this trio passed the time during most of the film's too-spare 98 minutes, but Plutarco is a character you likely won't forget.
The Violin is so beautiful to look at, it almost wouldn't matter if it had a story. But it has one, and it's riveting.
It's all stripped down to a conflict more abstract than historical, a fable of heroic defiance in the face of brutal oppression.
Francisco Vargas makes a marvellous debut with his magnificent The Violin.
Of course, there's Tavira, who, even if he never appears in another film, has left an indelible mark on cinema with his work here.
The weathered Tavina, who lost his hand in an accident at the age of 13, makes a fittingly indomitable hero. He's a character you're likely to remember - his face alone is worth a thousand words.
Shot in luminous, high-contrast black and white, it has the rugged if faintly self-important authority of a Hemingway short story.
A terrific debut by Vargas, who wrote, directed and produced.
Another sort of movie would find a feelgood way of resolving the story; Vargas's vision is more grim and more realistic, but it is persuasively real, and in Tavira the director has found a natural star of the screen.
The plot is slimmer than a bowed string and lacks tension.
A quietly gripping adversarial duel lies at the heart of this political thriller, which has been hailed as a masterpiece in Vargas's native Mexico.
The film's strongest asset is octogenarian newcomer Tavira, who exudes stoic dignity.
Audience Reviews for The Violin (El Violin)
[font=Century Gothic][/font]
[font=Century Gothic]"The Violin" is a cliched movie with little context, replete with two-dimensional characters populating the landscape. It is a shame because there are some particularly good ideas that are just never developed that well, especially the relationship between Plutarco and the army captain(Dagoberto Gama). It is a nice touch that Plutarco creatively explains the peasants' struggle to his grandson as a fable but the villains of the tale turn out to be the ambitious.(Something lost in translation?) For the record, not all ambitious people are bad. What if you want to be the first person to walk on Mars? No harm in that. Or is that the peasants are good just because they are humble, a stereotype if ever there was one?[/font]
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Foreign Titles
- The Violin (DE)
- The Violin (CA)
Following the tradition of my friend Vince Flores, the best snack to watch this movie with is LifeSavers Gummies
Bye, and support mexican cinema!
Fernando :)