A cielo abierto - Upon Open Sky Directed by Mariana Arriaga, Santiago Arriaga
A cielo abierto - Upon Open Sky
Directed by Mariana Arriaga, Santiago Arriaga
Starrings: Julio Bracho, Manolo Cardona, Julio Cesar Cedillo, Federica Garcia, Theo Goldin, Federica García González, Máximo Hollander, Sergio Mayer Mori, Cecilia Suárez
Country: Spain, Mexico, Argentina
Year 2023
Review Authour: Shane Virunphan
Click Here for Italian Version
“Ya olvídalo.”
“¿Tú lo vas a olvidar?”
“Nunca.”
The term revenge, and similar, according to the Vatican Bible website (1) is repeated one hundred and twenty-seven times. With a few exceptions, all in the old testament.
It is a widespread and important use. On the other hand, at the time, justice was not delegated to others: police and judges; but achieved directly with the law of retaliation.
There is a positive element. Its opposite has greater repetitiveness. One hundred and sixty-one words that say forgiveness and the like. (2)
Leviticus 19.18, revenge is resentment, love is forgiveness:
“You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.”
You shouldn't take revenge but love everyone.
But who deserves justice?
Deuteronomy 32,35-36 declines it:
“Vengeance and punishment will be mine when their foot falters! Yes, the day of their ruin is near and their doom is quick to come.
Because the Lord will do justice to his people and will have compassion on his servants; when he sees that all strength has vanished and he remains neither slave nor free."
Punishment at the hands of God is justice and it is God himself who imparts it. Those who have been wronged must only wait. There is a difference: God's justice is perfect and infallible.
But in this imperfect world, while waiting for a divine judgement, we must wait for an earthly legality, very often inadequate and questionable.
Currently justice is totally entrusted to public intermediaries. Indeed, these third parties are envious of interventions and advice regarding their field. They should be upright, they should judge and commute punishments based on impartiality. Unfortunately, due to inability, corruption, class connivance, whoever is delegated to carry it out does not fulfill his office. The question is, if there is no secular justice, should the punishment return to the victim's availability?
How many times is it necessary to forgive? Is it an infinite number or is there a limit?
When Saint Peter asks him, Jesus expresses himself clearly:
“Then Peter approached him and said: 'Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother if he sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Mk 18, 21-22)
The answer is clear:
“And Jesus answered him, 'I do not tell you up to seven, but up to seventy times seven.” (Mk 18, 21-22)
That is to say five hundred and thirty-nine times. A term that is not unlimited but so extensive that it is a terrible punishment for the victim himself while the guilty person will be able to enjoy his misdeeds for a long time. But there is an end, perhaps a distant one, but there is a deadline. The tension turns into passion and martyrdom.
This Christian feeling of revenge, experienced as pain and suffering, slow and meticulous, manifests itself mainly in the emotionality of the preparation, in savoring the final moment and in the amazement of the executed.
Revenge and forgiveness belong to three Mexican boys intent on organizing their retaliation in the film A cielo abierto - Upon Open Sky by directors Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.
It's 1993. Piedras Negras Desert, in the state of Coahuila in Mexico, near the border with Texas.
A car stops at a gas station. There is a man and his twelve-year-old son, Salvador. He is sleeping. It is an endless road, a typical landscape of infinite American spaces. They are going hunting. Suddenly a truck swerves, skips the lane, hitting the car head-on. The father dies instantly. The son is injured. The driver flees, leaving them without help.
Two-year ellipse. Mexico City.
The dead man's wife remarried. They have a prosperous existence, they are rich, with a beautiful house in which both families reside. The woman with her two children, the survivor Salvador and his older brother, Fernando. Also there is her new husband and daughter Paula, the same age as Fernando.
Fernando is obsessed with broken cars. For two years he has been a regular visitor to scrapyards to inspect cars destroyed in accidents. It is not an obsession as an end in itself. In reality he is constantly looking for clues to discover the driver of the truck.
He has only one goal: a ruthless feud. One day Fernando locates traces on the murderer and wants to go and take revenge. Taking advantage of their parents' vacation out of town, the two brothers set off to track him down. Reluctantly and under blackmail they are forced to be accompanied by their stepsister, Paula, and her boyfriend Edoardo.
Paula is beautiful and sexy. She flirts with Edoardo at home, arousing the jealousy of both Fernando, his age, and above all of Salvador, who is very excited and nervous even though he is still a child.
Edoardo is immediately dumped and Paula, instead of leaving with him, prefers to stay with her half-brothers.
The three young men find the truck driver, kidnap him, take him to the countryside and tie him to a tree. They have a revolver and are ready for revenge. The man must die like their father. But along the way something changed in their soul.
The themes are revenge, forgiveness, death, mourning, incest, adolescence, relationships between brothers and sisters, Mexico, the desert.
The pain of a premature death always requires a high commitment, especially for teenagers when they feel like sacrificial prey. The father is deceased while whoever killed him is alive and free. This generates an anger, an animalistic restlessness in Fernando and Salvador.
Mariana Arriaga describes their suffering:
“…story explores what someone would do if one of their parents were killed in a car accident, and delves into how people can become trapped in their grief, feeling unable to move forward.” (3)
Teenagers can grow up if they are trapped in anguish over the death of a parent and especially when the sense of justice is non-existent. Help could come from their adolescent hormones. Love and sexual desire between step-siblings is a hot topic that needs to be treated with care. Salvador is a child while Fernando is at the height of his strength and with a vigorous eroticism. When he begins love with Paula, the interpretation of their life changes and the purpose of their journey also changes. Revenge disappears and mercy takes over. Forgiveness is built with love “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. In this there is the concept of remission.
The authors are skilled at exploring a particular setting, something raw, a metaphor for life, says co-director Santiago Arriaga:
“... was to share our love for this place and our cinematic style with everyone: the desert, the harsh light, the shadows… everything had to reflect the rawness of real life. While the desert might seem like a place where nothing ever happens, it is actually a hub of activity. We shot a significant portion of the shots handheld to convey the emotions of the three main characters. We wanted to get closer to them, creating a sense of immediacy and harshness in the narrative.” (3)
Nothing should grow in the desert, it should be an uninhabited place but that's not true. The desert reflects the cruelty of reality. What's harder than adolescence?
Salvador was twelve years old at the time of the accident. Now his body is marked by a noticeable scar but his psyche is much worse. Even though he was personally involved and even though he risked his life, he has not processed the pain and has no anger. He appears melancholy, indolent, apathetic, sulky. When his brother suggests the vengeful raid he is apathetic and distrustful. She agrees solely due to Fernando's insistence. His weakness, his fragility, his sadness serve to hide his hidden secret: his voluptuous attraction for his stepsister. The authors film him when he scrutinizes Paula's sensuality.
Fernando is the avenging angel. Not only did he comb the scrapyards for two years but he even secretly obtained a gun. His desire to kill the truck driver was irrepressible. His intimacy is tormented, there is probably even an intense sense of guilt for not having been there too. He is faithful to his family. He is also strong and courageous. Therefore anger, the alteration of the passionate state create an inflexibility towards the killer. He takes pride in his role as the expedition's chief guide. He is the one who evolves more than anyone. Like Salvador he has a lascivious attraction for Paula. He's jealous of her stupid boyfriend. During the journey, Fernando and Paula argue and clash but not only carnal lust breaks out between them, but also a romantic relationship.
At home Paula didn't show any interest in Fernando, because she had a boyfriend. She is certainly more cultured, more reliable, more mature than them. She has a sign of rebellion, in fact she refuses her boyfriend's invitation to get back with him. Do you want to do something different or do you simply want to provoke the two brothers? She had discovered their lustful looks.
The three individualities, during the journey, became a single person, a single determined and stubborn personality. All together they symbolize divine judgment. And they declare divine judgment to a weeping, urine-stained murderer. They point the revolver at him. The man begins to beg them to whine, to justify themselves.
As if armed by God, the three boys pronounce the sentence: they forgive him!
The directors tell of a deep Mexico, of a desert made of squalid motels and endless roads, punctuated only by equally squalid service stations.
Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga are the children of filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga. The screenplay was written by the father in the nineties and recovered after a long time:
“The screenplay was written by your father in the 1990s. Can you tell us the story behind this script and why you decided to take on this project?
SA_ In that period, our father was personally affected by a car accident, and this theme became a recurring motif in his work. You can see this motif in many of the films he wrote, such as Amores Perros and 21 Grams: car accidents serve as catalysts that set the stories in motion. Interestingly, Upon Open Sky is actually the first screenplay he wrote, preceding Amores Perros." (3)
The Mexico of the setting was popular with the Arriega family as a vacation spot.
The adaptation has a personal reason but at the same time it is the metaphor of the passage from youth to maturity. Like the goat and dog investment scene. They too become animal exterminators and have to face the reactions of the owner of the flock.
It is a linear, well-directed film, with exact adolescent portraits, with a classic conflict, a traditional on-the-road. They leave when they were three separate people, although they lived in the same house, they return as a family. And forgiveness is not only a transcendent desire but also a cathartic one.
The rhythm continues with deliberate cadences, with a regular pattern for this genre. This allows for exciting observation and a prolonged state of expectation.
Revenge and forgiveness belong to three Mexican boys intent on organizing their retaliation in the film A cielo abierto - Upon Open Sky by directors Mariana Arriaga and Santiago Arriaga presented at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.