At The Circuit, John Hopewell and Emilio Mayorga offer a number of signs that “the mantle of greatness is rapidly slipping over” Silent Light director Carlos Reygadas. I’m surely not going to argue with that, but I do think it’s interesting that Mayorga and Hopewell make it a point to set Reygadas apart from other hot young Mexican directors, such as Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro Gonz??lez I????rritu, who crossed over to Hollywood success:
Reygadas has a niche in a pantheon - not new Mexican cinema; given the accessibility of and interest in film-making worldwide, the very concept of new national cinemas may be arcane - but new, left-field world cinema, up there with other unorthodoz film-makers such as, say, Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
Read: he’s making art films for die hards, and that’s never gonna translate to the masses.
I don’t know. I don’t want to be an elitist. I feel like I’m a woman of the people, or whatever. But I like it that Silent Light requires work to enjoy. It’s hard for me to reconcile the sad truth that popular culture as a whole feels more comfortable with Crash with subtitles.
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