Thoughts on..."El Crimen del Padre Amaro"

Ok, so apparently motivation is not a strong point of mine this semester. I try and try to get myself in gear, only to give in to the eventual temptation to do something other than study-ususally that something being nothing at all. Last night, that temptation took the form of watching the recently-arrived Netflix movie "The Crime of Padre Amaro". The original plan was to study some economics while the movie played in the background, but I rapidly realized that this movie is way too good to be anything other than front and center.

"Padre Amaro" is an adaptation of an old Portuguese work, the topics of which, however, apply perfectly to the modern-day rural Mexican pueblo. Gael Garcia Bernal plays Amaro, an innocent, freshly minted priest recently arrived to the diosis. There, he finds a Church in the midst of both social and religious confusion. The priest who is to be Amaro's sort of mentor, Padre Benito, is in the pocket of the drug traffikers, while at the same time, he maintains a sexual relationship with a woman in his own congregation (la Sanjuanera). Amaro is initially shocked by this behavior, but he does nothing. However, when the journalist boyfriend of the daughter of la Sanjuanera (Amelia) uncovers Padre Benito's dirty dealings with the "narcos", it is Amaro who is assigned by the Bishop to clean up the situation. Despite the weighings on his conscience, Amaro completes his task perfectly, attempting to calm himself with the delusion that he is doing the "will of God".

Amaro's coverup of the situation is only the beginning of his inevitable moral decline. He suffers, then succombs to, sexual temptation just as his priest mentor, Padre Benito, did. Amaro struggles to keep the truth secret, despite his charge as a priest to be the messenger of the the way of the Truth and the Light. He is transformed from a holy man with high hopes to a hypocrite of the most unholy fashion.

This summary does almost no justice to this complex, inherently controversial film. There are many Catholics who complained after the release of this movie that it represents a direct affront to the Church. I, however, disagree. For some Americans, (at least until the child abuse scandals), even the suggestion that there could be this kind of corruption inside the Catholic Church was blasphemous. This topic, however, is nothing new to many, even pious, Latin American Catholics, who are more accustomed to the sorts of problems brought up in this movie being commonplace. There is a whole other subplot that deals with a priest who is accused of assisting the guerrilla movement-this topic would ring very familiar in the minds of many Latin Americans.

Overall, I think that this movie has less to do about who its main characters are (priests), than the struggle of the human heart to resist the temptations of lust, power, and greed. This struggle is only amplified by the fact that priests are supposedly held to a higher standard than the rest of us. Director Carlos Carrera does a good job at not allowing the movie to degenerate into a simple morality tale, although some viewers may find the ending a bit predictable. This movie has been on my mind constantly ever since I saw it last night, and for its torturing of my conscience, I give it four stars. Probably the best movie I have seen all year other than "Eternal Sunshine."

And it appears that "Padre Amaro" has once again tempted me away from doing work...oh well, I'm off to download some Gael Garcia Bernal wallpaper for my computer...