TIFF19 REVIEW: Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] [2019]

But we’re Christians. Director Alejandro Amenábar spoke very briefly before the screening of his latest film Mientras dure la guerra [While at War] and the main sentiment was this: “It could happen anywhere.” He doesn’t, however, just mean rebellion or uprising. He doesn’t mean a coup or military dictatorship either. What he and co-writer Alejandro Hernández share via the parallel journeys of Don Miguel de Unamuno (Karra Elejalde) and General Franco (Santi Prego) is that just fights always run the risk of becoming unjust very fast. This truth is ultimately…

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REVIEW: Biutiful [2010]

“Still are your lashes, and so is your heart” It may be the first feature that Alejandro González Iñárritu directed without longtime writing partner Guillermo Arriaga, it may be the film that proves he was the driving force behind his loose trilogy of masterpieces spanning multiple languages and locales, but Biutiful also shows that his tales of emotionally wrought drama work best in an interweaving multi-layer structure. Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel all used three distinct plot threads, allowing them to coexist on a single plane and connect together,…

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