Film: My Father Pablo Escobar
Release date: 12th July 2010
Certificate: Exempt
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Nicolas Entel
Starring: Sebastian Marroquin
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Brightspark
Format: DVD
Country: Argentina/Colombia
Drugs, money, murder and the people left to pick up the pieces. These are the components that make up Nicolas Entel’s My Father Pablo Escobar, a world famous documentary about Colombia’s biggest ever drug dealer.
The documentary mainly focuses on Escobar’s son (renamed Sebastián Marroquín) and Widow Maria Victoria, as they explain their life in connection with Escobar. They paint a picture of a man who was madly ambitious, but also of a man who went further than drugs. Escobar wanted political control, and it’s explained how he tried to influence and infiltrate the political elite in Colombia.
Starting off in the Liberal Party, he was soon rejected when knowledge of his drug empire came to light. Not a man who takes rejection likely, Escobar used his power to launch a counter attack on those who spurned him. Unfortunately for him, and his family, it quickly grew out of control, and proved the eventual downfall of a man who was once ranked the 7th richest man in the world according to Forbes (1989)…
There is the feeling that the documentary was somewhat of a therapeutic exercise for Sebastián, helping him come to terms with his father’s legacy. In the second half of the documentary, he meets up with the sons of some of Escobar’s victims, explaining how he thinks that his father “up in heaven” does regret his life of violence, and the pain he caused the orphans and widows left behind.
Sebastián lives his life in Argentina as an architect, and there is a strong impression that this is his way of wiping the slate clean for him and moving on. Forced to keep a low profile because of his father, and hide the truth from his new friends in Buenos Aires, Sebastián finally begins to accept himself as an individual, and a man in control of his own life. The documentary allows him to state this, and is really just as much about Escobar as it is Sebastián.
The documentary works well because it allows Sebastián and Escobar’s widow centre stage. This is rightly so, as they, along with Escobar, are the real interest, and the documentary is chronicling their account of events. The camera films them sitting as they explain the various episodes that led to Escobar’s fall, and this is very nicely complimented by archive news footage of those same events. This helps in the impartiality of the documentary, and creates a more well rounded and balanced account of events. We see the internal pressures on Escobar, as revealed by the family, but we are also shown the response of the authorities and the public through the media footage.
The research carried out in preparation for the documentary took over eight years and really gives the documentary a professional touch. Because of the scale of Escobar’s former empire, and the multitude of opinions that surround him, it is important to get the facts right. The authoritative voice of the narrator aides this, although the narrator plays a small role and only acts where the story moves location or topic.
One recurring, but not surprising theme is money, and how drugs really do pay. Whilst it is nothing new in a film about drugs, My Father Pablo Escobar still manages to raise an eyebrow when it explains the scale and influence of the drug trade. Escobar was able to change the constitution to remove the threat of extradition, to kill and harass the political elite, and set himself up in a prison designed to his specifications (that reportedly was more like a 5-star hotel). However, this is balanced out when we meet the relatives of Escobar’s victims, and the people left to live their lives without their fathers. Sebastián writes to the sons of Escobar’s most famous victims, former Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and the former Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán. When they arrange to meet up, it is an emotional moment, and proves that the drug trade is a path laden with destruction as much as gold.
Escobar’s is a story that needs to be told, and his relatives were right to wait for Nicolas Entel to do the job. He shows the confliction in Sebastián between how he should feel about his father, and the guilt he feels about Escobar’s crimes.
Well researched and gripping, My Father Pablo Escobar paints an extraordinarily intimate picture of one of the biggest and most dangerous drug dealers of all time.
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