Film: The Invisibles
Release date: 20th November 2010
Certificate: E
Running time: 22 mins
Director: Gael Garcia Bernal & Marc Silver
Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico
This feature is available to watch online at: youtube.com/invisiblesfilms
Gael Garcia Bernal is probably better known for his Academy Awards than his political activism, and his co-director Mark Silver is not exactly a household name, but together they have created The Invisibles, a story of South American migrants. A documentary. These people, and these stories, are real. You can watch all of these films at youtube.com now.
Part 1 – Seaworld
In this first film, we are introduced to a group of migrants from South America who are stopping during their journey at a centre run by volunteers in Mexico.
There are single men and women and there are entire families, all searching for a better life over the border. Most poignantly, we are introduced to a little girl from El Salvador who desperately wants to see ‘beautiful’ America. Her youngest brother is only one year and eight months old. Their parents have risked everything to get their family this far, and the journey is far from over…
Marc Silver is an accomplished director and the precision of his opening shots is startling and stark. At first, there is no speech, just rolling music that washes over the men, women and boys who lie or sit against the concrete walls, listless in their anticipation of what the future may bring them. When the dialogue does begin, it is often in the form of a voiceover, leaving the individuals in shot to their own quiet dignity, while the tales of torture and death, destinies that could befall anyone of these people, are told in a calm and matter of fact manner. If people cannot provide the details of rich American family members, the tips of their tongues will be removed. If they have no money or information, they will be cut up and placed in 200 litres of boiling oil, sometimes while they are still alive, until the only thing left of them is old photos on posters of the missing.
By the time the film reaches the small El Salvadorian girl, the outlook is bleak, yet she is happy, and smiles at the thought of Sea World in America, a capitalist dream that she does not realise she is not entitled to. Captured in the name of this first instalment is the innocence of childhood.
Throughout the film emotions are kept at bay. These people no longer have the energy to express grief. The butchering of humanity becomes as regular as the chopping of the dark red beetroot in the centres’ kitchen. All that remains is a quiet sense of disbelief, which is transmitted to the viewer, that all this can happen to normal people, in the modern world, at the US border.
Part 2 – Six Out Of Ten
Garcia Bernal interviews three single mothers from Honduras. They have left their country to better provide for their children, but to do this they have had to leave behind the very people they love the most. Often the fathers of their children are dead. They see themselves as having no other choice than to travel to the US for work. Yet, on the way to America, six out of ten women will be sexually abused…
Silver uses a low camera angle to create intimacy in the first scene. Garcia Bernal sits with the women on the train tracks. For this moment, he has thrown in his lot with the people who have landed in his country of birth.
Through the hazy light of sunrise or sunset – the boundaries are blurred here for the migrant population who do not officially exist – the viewer finds themselves in a rubbish tip where people work, picking through the debris. A sun-bleached doll, discarded on the dry earth, is a reminder of the bodies found in the desert that borders Arizona. Sliver grinds this home with repeated cutaways to a barren tree in which carrion birds await their feast.
The human cost of this journey is made abundantly clear as a woman who works at the centre flicks through a book of names and tells some of their stories – a 14-year-old girl who asked for a contraceptive injection to prevent pregnancy if she was raped, and a 17-year-old girl raped while two months pregnant. The cinematography is sparse; there is no escaping from these truths.
The film closes with the very real tears of one of the mothers - she wants to provide for her child, but is aware of all that she has risked to do so.
Part 3 – What Remains
In the penultimate film, Silver and Garcia Bernal take a step back from the migrants at the centre and turn instead to the relatives of those who have left, and the stories of those who have been lost along the way…
Roses open the scene; perfect, pink and natural. The voiceover begins before we are shown the face of the woman who is speaking, giving, once again, a sense of absence. She has lost her son who, after having said that he would contact her twelve days after his departure, has never been heard of again. “I like plants,” she says, “they help me forget my worries.”
What remains is a collection of broken families who may never know the fate of their loved ones. Garcia Bernal is shown photos of the murdered migrants and then taken by a 16-year-old boy to a collection of unmarked graves. In this country, it is now the children who are the keepers of the dead. There is no official record of their deaths.
Part 4 – ‘Goal!’
The final film encompasses the political problems behind the continued migration, and the very real risks caused primarily by the imposed illegality of the journey. It tells the story of those who will keep trying no matter what the cost, and the Mexican people determined to help them, even though in doing so they place themselves at risk…
The film opens with a montage of shots - a man in a hospital bed, bandaged, heavily tattooed, and incapacitated by his ordeal, the ‘death trains’ on which crowds of migrants sit, exposed to the weather, and the gangs who make their livings extorting money from these people. It was on one of these trains that the young man sustained his injuries; he was pushed off by a gang member, and has had to have two fingers amputated as a result. There are men in wheelchairs, men being treated for the physical symptoms of sexual abuse; it is only here that the film suggests a sense of defeat.
Olga, a woman who treats the wounded migrants, lifts the mood with her deep respect for their efforts to better their lives, and the priest who ministers to them tells us they say, “God is with us.” Whatever might happen to them on the journey, they believe that this is their right.
The film’s title comes from a scene in which men and boys are watching football. They stand and shout at the goal, it could be any scene from any place, but here it is a cry of hope that life will one day be as normal and safe as the situation suggests.
Finally, Garcia Bernal uses a voiceover, while a train roles on into the dust, the migrants wave, and he tries to explain that this is not a problem that will go away - and that these people cannot continue to be invisible.
The Invisibles is an important collection of films because the voices it gives have so long been repressed and ignored. The heart of their message is that the migrants are real people who have expectations of life very similar to your own. The only difference is the country into which they were born. Silver and Garcia Bernal are due to make a feature length film on the same theme, and I can only imagine that it will be a stunning piece of art, yet a horrific tale of the state’s lack of care for the people who need it most. EM
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