Mexico's award-winning 'Divine' breathes originality

Mexico's award-winning 'Divine' breathes originality

Tony Ryanto, Contributor, Jakarta

For the last five years, Indonesian movie buffs have continued to
avail themselves of the opportunity to view well-done foreign
films not screened here theatrically.

Currently enjoying popularity are classics from Iran and
Mexico.

Three Mexican films, all directed by Arturo Ripstein, are
featured in this year's Jakarta International Film Festival or
JiFFest, its fifth edition, from Oct. 14 to Oct. 19 at H. Usmar
Ismail Film Center, Goethe Institute and Erasmus Huis.

The trio are Divine (1998), Such is Life (2000) and The
Ruination of Men (2000).

Ripstein, 57, is considered one of Mexico's most celebrated
and respected filmmakers, most likely the only one having
inherited the mantle of world famous Spanish director Luis Bunuel
(1900-1983). In a career spanning over 30 years, the Mexican film
director has become a filmmaker whose works have an international
impact.

His films are much awaited by the press, critics and the
public as well. His name lends credibility. He has no difficulty
attracting major stars and getting his projects financed. His
wife, script-writer Paz Alizia Garciadiego, has been a staunch
collaborator in about a dozen pictures.

Divine was named Best Picture at the 1999 Mexican Film
Festival in Guadalajara. It was invited to the 1998 Cannes and
Toronto International Film Festivals.

The story of a bizarre religious community headed by an exiled
elderly priest, Papa Basilio (Francisco Rabal), and his
prophetess wife, Mama Dorita (Katy Jurado), Divine, in the words
of Ripstein himself, was tailor-made for the millennium.

It was inspired by something that really happened in Mexico
15-16 years ago.

Not surprisingly, Divine has touches of Bunuel, particularly
in the mixture of the sacred and profane. And like Bunuel,
Ripstein sometimes makes governments uneasy and moviegoers
shocked and speechless.

Comprising a number of episodes, Divine, in its early footage,
has a scene depicting Nelida, a prostitute, serving her customer,
a middle-aged man. Considered distressing is the intensity and
viciousness with which the man afterwards kills himself in front
of the terrified woman.

Next sequence is an encounter between Nelida and Tomasa, a
street-wise teenage girl. Both are waiting for the end of the
world and the best place to go, according to the younger woman,
is a religious community in a secluded plateau high in the
mountains.

Far away from civilization, the inhabitants of the religious
sect are free to develop their own dreamland, which is oddly
influenced by the biblical epics of Hollywood in the 1950s.

Papa Basilio is an ardent fan of Charlton Heston, who plays
Moses in Cecil B. De Mille's The Ten Commandments.

In no time do audiences realize that it is Mama Dorita, and
not Papa Basilio, that holds the supreme power. And this dying
woman, who often cheats at dominoes, names Tomasa to be her
successor.

But once Tomasa becomes the leader, the community starts to
disintegrate because of her perversity. Thinking that she is a
saint, she is determined to purge men of their lustful sins. This
is done by cohabitation -- all the while imagining that
technically she retains her virginity.

It is this part of the film, according to one critic, that is
the most fascinating. To Ripstein, the 1998 movie is "The sum and
compendium of 33 years in the motion picture industry."

The chaotic situation leads to mob murder. The victim is a
transvestite who has just discovered that he is a virile young
man and his savior is Tomasa. Having lost his power, Papa Basilio
chides the priestess, who eventually realizes that she has made a
fatal mistake.

After all, she is not a saint but a common prostitute like
Nelida, who left the encampment after the two find out they fall
for the same young man.

What once was a relatively meek, easy-to-handle and harmless
group of worshipers is transformed into a destructive force that
lets loose the horrors of madness the moment they find out their
dreamworld is falling to pieces.

To Indonesians having seen Katy Jurado in Fred Zinneman's 1952
western classic High Noon (playing Gary Cooper's old flame), it
is both a shock and a surprise. Shocked because physically she
has changed a great deal and surprised because her acting talents
are forever young.

Carolina Papaleo plays Tomasa. Playing the third lead in the
film, she is not disappointing because she has the ability to
balance the acting of both Jurado and Rabal.

Often, the scenes in Divine remind us of beautiful paintings.
Like one critic says: "Even without understanding what Ripstein
exactly wants to express and pinpoint, the spectacular sequences
breathe originality and this alone sustains and captures
interest."

Divine to be screened at 2:30 p.m. at GoetheHause, Jl. Sam
Ratulangi 9-15 Central Jakarta, Tel. (021) 235-50208.