Based on what I’d heard about this movie, I was ready for something tedious, self-reflexive, academic and slow. It wasn’t….at all. I was engaged all the way through, both with the action/characters and with the way the two main storylines of the movie reflected off each other. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie that was engaging on an entertainment level as well as on an intellectual.
The action level in itself has plenty going on. A crew is making a movie about Columbus’ initial landing in the New World and brutal subjugation of the indigenous people that followed, but as the film crew is working on their movie, a full-scale rebellion breaks out in the city with some members of the film’s cast being involved. Lots of risk, action and conflict there; it’s a rich story.
As Even the Rain continues, though, some wonderful parallels emerge. First, it becomes obvious that he water company’s forcing the locals to pay for well water is a parallel to the exploitation of the colonists who forced indigenes to pan for gold. Parallels are clear between the colonial military forcing the mining and the modern Bolivian army enforcing water payment; there's even a parallel scene concerning dogs. And there are great scenes in Even the Rain with some of the local workers listening to actors delivering the lines like those of the 16th century anti-exploitation monk Bartolomé de las Casas; these 500-year-old exhortations are as pertinent in 21st century Bolivia as they were in the colonial period. Capitalism has replaced colonialism, but the indigenes suffer all the same.Suspended between these two areas of meaning is the filmmaking. The filmmakers partly participate in the exploitation, having come to Bolivia to save money and pay a pittance for wages. But parallels to the colonial era exist in the film company, too; the exploiting producer comes to sympathize with the oppressed locals, reflecting one reading of the trajectory of Columbus himself, and the lead actor has an instant sympathy with the local people like Bartolomé. Thrown in for good measure is the director, torn between totally loyalty to his film and a strong moral sympathy to the exploited locals. His situation is summed up well when he confronts the mayor about the poverty of the local population that works for as little as $2/day and the mayor responds that the film company was paying that itself.
These several levels of parallel and signification make Even the Rain a hugely pleasing film experience. I sometimes wished it were a little less hammer-to-the-head, but it so smart and often so beautiful that I was willing to look past that.
