Battle in Heaven Movie Review:


To follow up Japón, Reygadas goes even further into Mexican metaphysics with another intriguingly shot film that dares to confront us with imagery that's both explicit and unexpected. But this time he loses us in the process.

Marcos (Hernandez) and his wife (Ruiz) are in a bit of trouble. The baby they kidnapped from a friend (Ramirez), for a bit of spare cash, has died. Marcos works as a bodyguard for a general, whose wild-child daughter Ana (Mushkadiz) has a side business as a prostitute, simply because she likes it. When Marcos confesses the kidnapping to Ana, to take advantage of her services, he realises he has crossed a line. Soon he's doing things he never dreamt of, including joining a mass pilgrimage to the Mexico City Basilica.

The plot is simple and fairly undefined, so it's clear that Reygadas has much deeper things on his mind--namely rich symbolism and layered meaning. But the style is so aloof and dry that we are never allowed inside. The performances are raw and real, but also expressionless and almost sleep-inducingly vague. What remains for us is an intriguing examination of the godlike qualities of human beings--we think we can get away with anything, but we know we can't. And we don't.

The film is almost infuriatingly nebulous and slow. The striking cinematography includes indulgent static takes, awkward pans and dollies and strange editing, combined with blaring chunks of music to remind us we're watching Art. And there are some startlingly moving and authentic sequences along the way. But it's so passively observant, following Marcos as he encounters various characters, overhearing snippets of conversations, but not enough to really understand relationships. There's also rather a lot of sex and nudity, even though it's never remotely arousing, and that's only partly because these are mostly overweight, middle-aged people, not airbrushed, nipped and tucked Hollywood stars. The real problem is that Reygadas doesn't seem willing to let us into his own little filmmaker's world. Kind of like he's doing with cinema what Marcos does while watching a football match.



Rich Cline

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