{"id":9718,"date":"2023-01-01T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-01T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=9718"},"modified":"2022-12-31T21:11:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T02:11:05","slug":"la-caja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/01\/la-caja\/","title":{"rendered":"La Caja."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

La Caja (The Box) <\/em>was Venezuela\u2019s submission for this year\u2019s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, but didn\u2019t make the shortlist of 15 that was announced in December; it\u2019s on MUBI, for which we signed up to watch Decision to Leave<\/a><\/em>, so I watched this as well. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hatz\u00edn (Hazt\u00edn 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\u2019s on the bus back to Mexico City when he spots a man in the street (Hern\u00e1n Mendoza) who looks just like the pictures of his father, whom he hasn\u2019t seen since he was very little. Hatz\u00edn gets off the bus and confronts the man, who insists he\u2019s not Hatz\u00edn\u2019s father, but Hatz\u00edn returns the box of remains to the office and confronts the man, repeatedly, until he takes Hatz\u00edn in and ends up bringing him to his work as a recruiter for a maquiladora <\/em>(factory) near the U.S. border. The work isn\u2019t always savory, and at times is illegal, leading Hatz\u00edn to question whether he should stay there or even wants this man to turn out to be his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story is pretty simple, and revolves around just those two questions: Is this man Hatz\u00edn\u2019s father, and what will Hatz\u00edn do if it turns out that he is? The man, who calls himself Mario, is furious with Hatz\u00edn at the start for the boy\u2019s insistence that this is his father and refusal to leave, although of course that could be a sign that Mario doesn\u2019t want his old life \u2013 where he at the very least left Hatz\u00edn, Hatz\u00edn\u2019s mother (since dead), and his own mother \u2013 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\u2019t want to be responsible for him. But he then takes Hatz\u00edn 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Hatz\u00edn 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. Hatz\u00edn 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\u2019ve lost are tainted by reality? Is it better to know the brutal truth, or to leave the past buried? He\u2019s 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\u2019t his dad? The excellence of La Caja<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is Naverette\u2019s first film or TV role, and he delivers an essential performance \u2013 without him, the film can\u2019t work \u2013 that doesn\u2019t line up with his lack of experience. Hatz\u00edn 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 or the maybe-father he is to Hatz\u00edn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can only find La Caja<\/em> on MUBI, at least right now, but if you subscribe to that site it\u2019s worth the watch. You can also sign up for it via amazon<\/a>, with a 7-day free trial, which would also let you watch Decision to Leave<\/em>, one of the best movies of 2022 that I\u2019ve seen, and Aftersun<\/em>, which is coming to MUBI on January 9th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La Caja (The Box) was Venezuela\u2019s submission for this year\u2019s Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, but didn\u2019t make the shortlist of 15 that was announced in December; it\u2019s on MUBI, for which we signed up to watch Decision to Leave, so I watched this as well. It\u2019s a simple, bleak story that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1290,161,215,1319],"class_list":["post-9718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2022-movies","tag-highly-recommended","tag-movies","tag-venezuelan-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9719,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9718\/revisions\/9719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}