Güeros (2015)

Best movie of this year hands down!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The story here is as clever as it is simple. Two brothers and a friend hit the road in search of a dying Mexican folk singer who, according to legend, once made Bob Dylan cry with one of his touching ballads. While there are numerous side stories and plenty of character development, the plot doesn't get a whole lot deeper than that, and it is all the better for it. In that sense, the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing and they achieved it wonderfully.The film has a few flaws, but overall I thought it was pretty good. It could have been shorter, but the pacing is great. I felt like a few of the scenes were added just to ensure a sufficient running time and they could have been cut. One thing I loved about the film was that we never actually hear the music of the fictional Mexican folk singer that the brothers are following. Their car's cassette player is broken so they only ever listen to him via headphones. We are left to watch their silent reactions and fill in the missing pieces for ourselves. I'm not sure if the filmmakers had intended to possibly insert music during post production and then decided against it, but either way it is very effective and well done.Without giving anything away, the ending of the film is right in line with the rest of the film's pacing. It is slow and anticlimactic, but we still end up feeling like everything turned out just the way it should, much like the characters are left feeling. And it is totally hilarious, but in such a dry way that you just might miss it.Despite being a road film in essence, with characters traveling around and getting into adventures, Güeros isn't about story or characters so much as it is about a feeling. It's a feeling that most of us likely experience at some point in our lives, and for that reason most people will be able to relate to this film on some level.

Sombra and Santos are aimless youths in Mexico City. There is a student strike at the University and the guys are striking against the strike. Sombra is surprised to find Tomás at his apartment. He's been sent there by their mother. Mexican rock musician Epigmenio Cruz is supposedly hospitalized and Tomás wants to visit him. The guys search for him and encounter a series of incidents.The first forty minutes are aimless. It's a lazy hazy afternoon of nothing dramatic. It could be a lost start and then the road trip happens. The situations get more interesting. It's all in black and white. It has a dreamy quality. It has some compelling moments and an overall feel of adventure.

I know this might come out as a little pretentious, but to fully get the movie you've got to be at least acquainted with a little bit of recent Mexican history. The references are funny but well carried out: the University's strike of 1999, the massive concert at Avandaro in the 60s, the Oxxo/K/7eleven (convenience stores) as a place of nocturnal gathering and longing for alcohol, cigarettes and cheap burritos, the high-scale parties crashed by ironic outsiders, Tlatelolco as a locus of the tragic 1985 earthquake--all of these refer, not quite just satirically but neither quite seriously, to essential turning points of the history of Mexico City from the second half of the XXth century on. In a sense, the movie is a road movie--telling the story of the City from the nostalgic perspective of someone who has dwelled at its most intense venues. You get to see the innards of massive department buildings, the zoo, a homeless performing its deliciously enticing, endless discourse on his life, the national university at its more heightened political ventures, downtown, marginal pulquerias (places where pulque, is sold), and the demonstrations at the middle of a high-speed road. There is not much more of a common thread amongst all the scenes apart from looking for an old, decadent hero that personally influenced the main characters; the longing for love, the running away from untold fears. But not much more is needed; if you've ever been on an all-night party at the City, indifferently to your economic background, you'll find yourself reflected in the sequences.

Gueros, the title refers to light-skinned or blonde-haired Mexicans as explained by the character in the film Santos; it also implies Gueros have it easier than their darker looking fellows. Director Ruizpalacios debut film is a Mexican indie film in which two brothers; Fede aka Sombra and younger Tomas along with Santos waste their lives living in a flat while those around them stage a massive student demonstration. Such politics is the backdrop of this playful, self critiquing yet grounded film in which the siblings embark on a search for an folk singer. Although the local college students have been boycotting the university for the past 163 days, Sombra not participating lays about in his apartment "on strike from the strike" with Santos. When his brother Tomas arrives and grows tired of that life in couple of days, they decide to search and pay respects to hospital stricken musician Epigmenio Cruz. They listened to his cassette, and believed his music drove Bob Dylan to tears. But the protests are never out of the picture as the journey takes a detour to the University with filmmaking breaking barriers into documentary style imagery informing us of the revolution and its cause, also at the same time filmmaker keeps it lighthearted with self criticisms of Mexican cinema like "We grab a bunch of beggars and shoot in black & white". "Gueros" isn't a film making some statement with a dramatic climax but rather is fulfilling journey giving its characters a realization of their place in society.