By Jake Howell jake.howell@utoronto.ca
Cannes Competition Review: Heli
Better known as a protégé of Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante (Los Bastardos)’s Heli runs a gamut of topics sure to make an audience gasp: from sexual travesties to animal cruelty to unflinching torture, the content here makes for a tough sit. But it’s also an important film, as Escalante turns the camera on his hometown of Guadajuato to grapple with some of Mexico’s biggest problems: cartel and drug-related violence.
The Spanish-born director wastes no time in setting the tone for Heli’s horrors, which are graphically depicted. With a car-mounted camera, the film’s exquisite opening tracking shot foreshadows events to come when a truck full of thugs hang a corpse from a neighborhood bridge, a shocking image of gore and fear. Unfortunately, we know the tableau is drawn directly from reality, as any related Google searches will provide photographic evidence of Mexican criminals’ rampant barbarities. Nevertheless, other tracking shots throughout the film continue to impress, and Escalante’s throwback to The Searchers’ bookend scenes is a welcome one.
Before the violence realizes its fullest gut-wrenching potential, we’re introduced to a small working-class family and the eponymous Heli, who lives in the same casa with his father, his wife, his baby, and his younger sister Estela (each played by local actors; Armando Espitia’s turn as the title character an especially strong one). Heli and his father work diligently at a local factory—underlined, to be sure, as honorable work in a land of corruption—while his wife stays home to take care of their infant. Things are generally más o menos around the house until Beto, Estela’s cadet boyfriend, finds a cache of cocaine in an underground deposit. Heli intercepts and destroys the packages, but once the damage is traced back to him, cartel crooks storm his house and attack his family.
A difficult narrative, but given the reality of it all, the result comes across as nonfiction and the antithesis of contrived. The production values are also surprisingly high for this low-budget drama, with Escalante achieving absolute fidelity where Heli needs it most: the lighting is natural and faithful (the roads are unlit and the nights are pitch-black, reminiscent of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2011 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and the violence is stark and terrifying. Hammering home the latter point is one of the most brutal torture scenes in recent memory, which manages to convey the unshakeable feeling of true helplessness. To that end, it should be clear: if you thought Zero Dark Thirty was painful to watch, Escalante has four words for you: “crotch” and “fire” and “unflinching camera.” Taken together, the result is a rattling experience–but a fine film in its own regard.
