Men With Guns (Movie Review)

“MEN WITH GUNS”. Written and directed by John Sayles ; c1997 ; Rated R ; U.S. (Spanish & English) ; 128 min. A first-rate independent film - a gripping allegorical tale of the politically niave, told through the eyes of a man whose notions of good and evil are uprooted as he confronts the moral failure of his country, and his own (possible) unknowing role in it.

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John Sayles, perhaps the premier independent film-maker in the U.S., based this project on personal experiences, various news accounts, and on Francisco Gold’s novel “The Long Night of White Chickens”. The resulting project, “Men With Guns”, is an odyssey in the classical sense. It is set in an unnamed, war-torn, Latin American country. Sayles never names the locale; presumably, there is no reason to do so. It is anonymous not because the actual location will be obvious, but because it simply does not matter. It could happen anywhere, and it has happened almost everywhere in Latin America. Where? Wherever there are men with guns. It is an allegorical tale, and history is as much at stake as is hope.

The protagonist is Dr. Humberto Fuentes (Federico Luppi) , an aging medical doctor, politically naive, but a very decent man in every regard. He is asked to climb a mountain, literally and figuratively. Though the trip he expects might be more “Wizard of Oz”-like, reality is closer to “Apocalypse Now”, at least in terms of the destructiveness. Many of the Doctor’s steps are painful, and with these come self-discovery, and the gradual erosion of the idealism so easily maintained during his once “normal” and comfortable life.

The “good doctor” is a respected physician, nearing retirement. He is a member of the higher class, and frequents circles of important people - and even has senior military officers as clients. He has a family, and loved his wife, who has recently died. This brush with mortality creates a renewed interest in his “legacy”, the medical students he trained earlier in life, all of whom volunteered and were sent to rural, civil-war-torn regions in his homeland, to treat local people. This rural program was his project, his dream for a better future. His “vacation”, a pilgrimage, is a journey to discover what has become of his students, and hence his legacy; it is a journey of self-discovery, though Fuentes learns as much of unbridled human nature as he does anything else. In possession of only a few facts, Fuentes is set on this odyssey. As such, his information and discovery will come from the usual suspects - in the literary sense (a common complaint against Sayles as a film director is that he should have written a 400-page novel, but instead made a 120-minute film, and the latter is always a poor substitute for the former).

The Doctor is eventually set along this journey by a blind woman (Iguandili Lopez) who is not afraid of anything. Unlike the others -and there are many others- she has no fear, she claims; she is unafraid to speak because her children are already dead, she has no legacy, her dream is lost, and so it doesn’t much matter anymore. The good Dr. is then later paired with an orphan child-guide named Conejo (Danny González) who speaks the local dialects. After being victimized, the Dr. ends up chofer to a criminal ex-soldier, Domingo (Damián Delgado) who is extremely careful of speaking of anything, an ex-priest (Damian Alcazar), who may or may not be sane, though speaks only of guilt and of faith lost. They later encounter and are accompanied by a woman who has not spoken in years - a mute rape victim (Tania Cruz), who is afraid of almost everything, though it is unclear if she is too traumatized to speak, or simply believes there is nothing left to say. Those who do speak incessantly, and see everything - though understand nothing- are an American couple, the “gringo tourists” stumbling their rambled way through the ruins of the Latin world.

Everyone in the film is blind to something, whether or not it is their own guilt, the lack thereof, misplaced faith, a bankrupt philosophy, or the despair which surrounds them. And, everyone in the film has an aversion to honest, strait-forward communication (as the saying goes, “truth is the first casualty of war”). Symbols have been inverted, and moral failure abounds. Even rather simple objects have been hijacked (the schools for children, the medical instruments originally secured by the good doctor, etc.) for the worst of purposes. In the end, the allegory works remarkably well, and is political, because life is necessarily so. The good doctor learns what became of his students, and by default what will be his legacy – and many other legacies, often also paved with good intentions.

Note, to avoid confusion: In 1997, two projects were made and later released under the same title, “Men With Guns”. This picture by Sayles is a drama set in Latin America, starring Federico Luppi; the other, a film by Kari Skogland, is a crime-drama starring North American character-actor Paul Sorvino.

May 2002