I haven’t seen anything else by Alex Cox, but the film itself isn’t surreal in the Buñuel, Lynch, or Jodorowsky style. I wouldn’t call it surreal in any sense, in fact. It is on one level a standard-looking hollywood film, with hollywood actors such as Ed Harris and Peter Boyle, as well as a brief appearance from Alfonso Arau (El Guapo from The Three Amigos, and the director of Like Water for Chocolate). The surface level of the humor is also on par with Hollywood films from the 80s, and it comes across as just as goofy as anything from that period.
At the same time it subverts both this paradigm and the idea of history itself, as it’s filled with anachronisms, distortions of history, and in the end, a very stark critique of American intervention in Nicaragua (and Central America by extension). Whenever it’s funny, it’s also challenging conventions.
It seems like a lot of people (or maybe just critics) hate it for not being accurate, and frankly, it’s deliberate in not trying to be accurate. (The anachronisms and distortions actually increase and become more blatant as the film progresses.) In this way, it fits into the model of New Historical Narrative, and in this respect it’s maybe a distant cousin of Aguirre the Wrath of God or How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, though the humor and tone are distinct from both.
On the whole I think it’s rather clever in what it does. It tends to be visually interesting, and I enjoy going back to it with some frequency. So there’s my ringing endorsement. If you’re interested in history or in Latin America, I’d say to definitely give it a look.
brady qw
This films was released by Criterion, though it seems fairly obscure… I hear it is very surreal, but is it surreal in the sense of Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois or surreal as, say, Eraserhead, or even El Topo?
I’m kind of interested in it, the sunset-themed color scheme in some of the stills I’ve seen really caught my eye.
Is this a normal kind of Alex Cox movie?