La Caja.

La Caja (The Box) was Venezuela’s submission for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, but didn’t make the shortlist of 15 that was announced in December; it’s on MUBI, for which we signed up to watch Decision to Leave, so I watched this as well. It’s a simple, bleak story that is exceptionally well-told, and while the story is quite specific to its setting, the themes of displacement and loss should have a much broader appeal.

Hatzín (Haztín Navarette) is a young Venezuelan teen or pre-teen who has traveled to a village in Chihuahaua, Mexico, to pick up the remains of his father, which were discovered in a mass grave there. After he gets the box, he’s on the bus back to Mexico City when he spots a man in the street (Hernán Mendoza) who looks just like the pictures of his father, whom he hasn’t seen since he was very little. Hatzín gets off the bus and confronts the man, who insists he’s not Hatzín’s father, but Hatzín returns the box of remains to the office and confronts the man, repeatedly, until he takes Hatzín in and ends up bringing him to his work as a recruiter for a maquiladora (factory) near the U.S. border. The work isn’t always savory, and at times is illegal, leading Hatzín to question whether he should stay there or even wants this man to turn out to be his father.

The story is pretty simple, and revolves around just those two questions: Is this man Hatzín’s father, and what will Hatzín do if it turns out that he is? The man, who calls himself Mario, is furious with Hatzín at the start for the boy’s insistence that this is his father and refusal to leave, although of course that could be a sign that Mario doesn’t want his old life – where he at the very least left Hatzín, Hatzín’s mother (since dead), and his own mother – to intrude on his new one. As Mario, he has a wife, child, and a baby on the way, as well as a job, a factory of his own in progress, and a middle-class existence. Or maybe he just thinks this kid is a pest and doesn’t want to be responsible for him. But he then takes Hatzín in and uses him as a helper, especially when he discovers the boy can read and write well and has a good memory. Does he actually care for the boy, or is he just an opportunist?

Meanwhile, Hatzín confronts an escalating set of moral quandaries as he follows Mario through his job, from recruiting desperate people to work in the sewing factory under dubious pretenses to quelling dissent to grand larceny, and more. Hatzín barely had any memories of his father; if Mario is, in fact, his dad, is this the dad he wanted? What happens to us when our memories of those we’ve lost are tainted by reality? Is it better to know the brutal truth, or to leave the past buried? He’s also faced with a more immediate dilemma: If he were to go to the police, would he be betraying his father? What if he does nothing, and it turns out that Mario isn’t his dad? The excellence of La Caja lies in just how many of these moral questions, ranging from basic to profound, it manages to pose despite just two main characters and what had to be a fairly short script.

This is Naverette’s first film or TV role, and he delivers an essential performance – without him, the film can’t work – that doesn’t line up with his lack of experience. Hatzín the character is a stoic, taciturn kid, already resigned to the tragedies that have taken both of his parents from him and the life it implies; when pure chance throws Mario into his path, he’s already mature enough to make the serious choices required of him. Navarette puts that tension to work on his face and in his sparing movements, making it easy to see his future as a noir detective or a sardonic action hero. Mendoza is almost his equal, threading the needle between the gruff and callous businessman he is at work and the caring family man he can be at home – or the maybe-father he is to Hatzín.

You can only find La Caja on MUBI, at least right now, but if you subscribe to that site it’s worth the watch. You can also sign up for it via amazon, with a 7-day free trial, which would also let you watch Decision to Leave, one of the best movies of 2022 that I’ve seen, and Aftersun, which is coming to MUBI on January 9^th.