Una pasión singular

This heavy political film about a page in the Andalucia of the be first three decades of the 20th Century prior to the Spanish Civil War, is charged with facts and figures that are difficult to follow for the casual viewer not from Spain. Even as a Spaniard, the story of those turbulent years in which the well intended group which Blas Infante was leading, would be hard to follow today. Andalucia is given credit in the film for its generous support for having this movie produced.

Unfortunately, Antonio Gonzalez, and his collaborator, and screen writer, Antonio Onetti, made this film for local consumption, we suspect. In fact, sometimes, well intentioned Spanish films expect people in other countries to understand a local page of its history, but since it's an obscure incident, we feel lost in trying to grasp the story.

The best thing in the movie is the performance of Daniel Freire, who portrays Blas Infante, a man with the singular passion that thought about an agrarian reform where the poor people of Andalucia would have benefited, had it gone into effect. Of course, since Blas came from a well to do family, it was hard to imagine someone in his shoes rooting for the poor and the destitute of that poor land.

Juan Diego, Marisol Membrillo, and Maria Galiana, are seen in minor roles.

This movie is a very decent first try to depict who Blas Infante was: as an ideologist and a human being. The acting is good in general, specially those of Marisol Membrillo (as Mrs. Infante), Daniel Freire (as Blas Infante), Juan Diego (as Blas's father-in-law) and Maria Galiana (as Blas's mother). The script and its dialogs might have needed some trimming and polishing, as they sound a bit academic and unnatural in the mouth of some of the characters. The locations are very well chosen, as some were the places where the actual facts happened. I would like to praise the magnificent fotography by Teo Escamilla and the soundtrack by Javier Camara that enhance some tense moments. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) was a cruel killing between brothers, as all civil wars, and some aspects of that are well shown in this picture.

I am not a Spaniard, but I know Spain quite well. I enjoyed this film, but I wondered why nobody has noticed the similarity to the fate of Federico García Lorca. I found it moving, but for non-Spanish speakers, I found the subtitles rather poor. At one point, when an officer called another officer to ask, "What are the charges against him," the reply was "I ignore them." A correct translation would be, "I don't know." That was just one example. On the other hand, the translators did as well as they could with "latifundio," a concept alien to outsiders.

I recommend this film to anyone concerned about justice. Very well acted.