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Young people endure the harrowing journey north in the powerful and moving Sin Nombre |
Uncovering a heart-breaking story of teenagers’ exodus
SIN NOMBRE
Directed by Cary Fukunaga
Certificate 18
THE Mara Salvatrucha gangs are a surrogate “family” based around a shanty area of Mexico who demand utmost loyalty from their members.
Guns and drugs, of course, play a part, but they also trade on people’s desperate circumstances, and work the routes north to the US. They arrange trafficking, helping what director Cary Fukunaga calls a “mass exodus, not a migration”. This provides ready cash, and, to add to their coffers, they also hold up the stowaways perched on top of trains, stealing from those who have nothing but their life savings on them as they cling to the sides of the freight carriages, unsure of what awaits but happy to leave a certain future of unbelievable deprivation behind.
Such an incident kickstarts this story of three teenagers whose lives cross as they journey. We’ve already been introduced to gang member Casper, and a 12-year-old recruit, Smiley, who craves the strong male role models the gang seemingly provide. We discover Casper’s loyalty has been put to the test, after he falls for a girl from another part of town.
Without wanting to ruin an excellent plot, I can tell you this much: Casper is soon forced to consider his own actions and the behaviour of the community he belongs to, and wonder if it is the only way to live his life. When he makes the decision, it has devastating consequences for himself, other gang members and Sayra, a girl he meets on the freight train heading north.
This was clearly a tricky film to make. Fukunaga uses a Ken Loach-style realism, employing a Central American cast with no previous experience, and shooting on location, which in some places meant really clinging to the roof of a train with real immigrants. This is by no means polished.
While lacking at first the dramatic tension and production values of other recent South America films that found a ready audience in Europe – gang feature City of God and the excellent kidnapping drama Sequestro Express – it soon warms up. This is partly due to the performances of the main actors, but also the real sense of poverty that litters every scene, and means you hardly need to believe the motives driving the characters.
The backdrop is so horrible, and real, that it’s immediately obvious why they behave the way they do. All you have to do is look around you.
It’s powerful stuff, and the edgy production adds, rather than detracts, from a dramatic, interesting and essentially heart-breaking modern tale of life south of the border. |
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