Last night I watched one of the most powerful movies ever! Ever! It captures the Church teaching on war and what war does to people better than many other war movies.
In Spanish, it is called Casas de Carton, in English, Innocent Voices. It is a 2004 movie that features Latino screen writer and actor Oscar Torres’s life story about growing up in El Salvador in the mid 80s during the viscious civil war. What makes this movie so beautiful and terrible at the same time, is that it is told from the perspective of an 11 year old boy . It opens with a group of little boys being marched in the rain at gun point. The narrator wonder why the soldiers want to kill them. Then the scene fades away to tell the story of how this group of boys are arrested by soldiers.
The movie contrasts the child’s innocence with the brutality of war. Torres, or Chava as they call him, grows up in the slum where the desperately poor people of Latin America languish. But what is so heartening is to see normal family life unfold amidst the squalor. Then the night arrives and the children have to hunker down under the bed as the bullets fly between the guerrillas and the Salvadoran Army. From a mother’s perspective, I had a very difficult time watching it, and then you realize that this is someone’s real life story. This is what happened to civilians.
You see the American Soldiers arrive and stand by with the Salvadoran Army. You know they give assistance to the brutal Salvadoran military as they round up little boys to force them to fight.
And you see desperate mothers, teachers, and the Church, trying to protect the children, unsuccessfully, from the Military. The soldiers would invade a school and then call up all boys aged 11-13 and make them fight. The soldiers would grab girls off the street and take them away for, well they don’t show you, but you know. Keep in mind, this is all told from the perspective of a child.
You see the heroic priest try and defend and protect his people. Then you see what happens to him.
You see the people realize that their only way to defend themselves is by joining the guerillas and fighting for their lives.
From all that I have written, one would think it is a depressing movie. It is not. It has this amazing ability to have HOPE and FAITH and best of all, the movie demonstrates the Power of a Mother. My God this movie is THE ode to motherhood and heroic motherhood at best. A motherhood that copes with their husbands and fathers leaving them and having to cope and provide for their children in extreme circumstances. It is a story of Mothers who will do whatever they have to do to save their children.
This move cannot get more Catholic with its themes: Life is Sacred and Divine! Motherhood is not for wimps! Innocence is from God. War is antithetical to the pro-life cause. Inherently evil, normally in these types of movies the guerrillas are shown as the good guys, and here one senses that the people had no other choice, but this movie shows that the very act of killing dehumanizes EVEN when justified.
The part that kept me going is that I knew Oscar Torres lives to tell his story.
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