The Last Christeros (2011)

Los últimos cristeros

Directed by: Matias Meyer

Mexico, in the 1930s. At the tail end of the Cristero War, in which the Mexican government attempted to enforce various secular provisions of the constitution, a last band of Christian hold-outs skirmish with government troops, their ammunition and strength running low. The group of five, sometimes six, men wander through the hills, say goodbye to their families, and prepare for the inevitable.

Most of the facts about the background to this movie came from research on the internet, because you’d find it hard to glean them from the film, which seems to consist principally of shots of the men walking slowly towards the camera, or away from the camera, or sometimes across the field of view. Occasionally, they remain still, and the camera tracks across them. On one or two occasions, they run rather than walk. There is very little dialogue, and almost nothing happens – and what does happen is maddeningly repetitive. The effect is of a silent movie being broadcast on the radio.

Last year’s Of Gods and Men was a powerful evocation of the suffocating tension amongst a group of devout Christians waiting for a violent death. This film is, by comparison, obtusely inarticulate. It misses every opportunity to make its case, or to explore the paradoxes that are staring us in the face: a revolution conducted in the name of freedom suppressing a group of Christians who have espoused violent resistance. The Last Christeros is, perhaps, an experiment, and one that has gone badly wrong. Awful.