La caja - The Box

La caja – The Box

Director: Lorenzo Vigas

Starrings: Elián Gonzalez, Hatzín Navarrete, Hernán Mendoza, Cristina Zulueta

Country: Mexico, USA

Year 2021

Author review: Roberto Matteucci

Click Here for Italian Version

"We are at war with the Chinese."

The antagonism between son and father is one of the main topos of world literature. It is a difficult relationship and, at the same time, an intense love. It is the starting point for taking totally different paths. It will imply rivalry and a struggle to get permission and approval. However, love between father and son is undeniable.

Sigmund Freud highlighted competition and love. He describes his opinion between Hans and his father in the book: The case of Little Hans – Analysis of a Phobia in a Five–Year–Old Boy

“And Hans deeply loved the father against whom he cherished these death-wishes; and while his intellect demurred to such a contradiction, he could not help demonstrating the fact of its existence, by hitting his father and immediately afterwards kissing the place he had hit.” (1)

Hans is the baby of the Oedipus complex. He has the unconscious desire to eliminate, even by killing, his father. However, simultaneously, as a sign of love, "… immediately afterwards kissing the place he had hit.” According to Freud, the contradiction of this love cannot be avoided:

“... there was fear of his father and fear for his father. ...” (2)

In the film La caja, directed by Lorenzo Vigas, the confrontation between a thirteen-year-old boy, abandoned by his father, is set in rural Mexico, besieged by drug traffickers. La caja was presented at the 78th Venice Film Festival.

Black screen. Some bangs are heard. Mid-shot, a boy in a toilet beats hard with his feet. It is a rhythmic noise. Another bang is added. Someone knocks on the door. It is a bus stop. The bus is going to the north of Mexico. Many murdered immigrants were found in a mass grave. There are so many corpses. On the bus, there are the relatives of the victims. They are going to recover the bodies.

Hatzín is a thirteen-year-old. His grandmother sent him to collect the box with his father's body. There are no other people in their family. He talks on the phone with his grandmother. It is a long journey. Hatzín begins the return with the box on his lap. He has just sat down when he catches a glimpse of a man through the side window. Hatzín is certain, he is his father. He does not believe in his death. He quickly gets out and confronts him. His name is Mario. Mario's first reaction is to deny, by reacting violently, to drive him out. However, Hatzín is sure, so he does not daunt and follows him, resists him. In the end, Mario, always denying it, agrees to help him. He teaches him the job and then introduces him to his family. However, Hatzín has a bitter surprise. The initial Mario, helpful and generous with illegal immigrants, is instead an evil exploiter, a thief, and infamous.

La caja is Vigas' third film. It is the conclusion of a trilogy. The first was a short, Los elefantes nunca olvidan, followed by Desde allá, winner of the Golden Lion in 2015. In these films, he follows the same narrative strategy. Vigas depicts the bond between parent and son. The father left his son when he was a child. The child grows up with rancour, with the traditional Oedipus complex, love and hatred for the father. He would like to find him and he would like - metaphorically or physically - to kill him.

Is the question obvious? Why does Vigas depict this perennial and uncomfortable feeling with emphasis? What terrible secret hides the bond between Vigas son and Vigas father? Lorenzo Vigas is determined and responds with affection:

“I had a great relationship with my father, we were very close. He was a very important painter in Venezuela, and we have always been very close. When I was a teenager, however, I needed to become someone because he was so important and that caused me a lot of pressure and tension. Maybe that's why I need to make movies about fatherhood, but my dad treated me well, he died five years ago, and it was really hard to face his death, it was my first influence. His paintings had an impact on my early projects, but I don't think his death affected this film because it was written five years before I lost him." (3)

Psychologically, in his films, there is a constant search for a father, but more likely it is a search for filial love.

As the emotional relationship between the author and his young actors. Vigas exalts his tenderness tie both with Luis Silva, the protagonist of Desde allá, and with Hatzín Navarrete:

"I was in a really difficult situation, and I didn't know what would happen: maybe he wouldn't have accepted it, maybe he would be hurt. I took the opportunity. The only thing I said was that we had to give him love, 24 hours a day. He had to feel it, so I loved him throughout all the filming so that he felt safe and loved. The reaction was one of surprise and, fortunately, shooting has, in a sense, freed him. At the beginning of the film, he was a different person, and it's great how he's changed. No one could have believed that Hatzín, who smiled and danced at the end of the film, in the beginning, he didn't talk to anyone. Filming, lets him compare his own story with that of fiction, he forced him to live a kind of catharsis, and now I am a sort of his father. He calls me every two days in real life. I tend to develop this type of relationship with my young actors. Happened to the protagonist of Desde allá: now I am like his father, he lives in Chicago and I have become a father figure, I send him money, we love each other ... With Hatzín the important thing was to give him love, but it was a risk for the film, he could have changed his approach to acting." (3)

Desde allá is set in Venezuela, a country in economic crisis, but also a country full of utopian dreams. The location of La caja is Mexico. The country of the narcos and the immigrant masses from the south. Throughout, there is an underlining metaphor connecting the nation and protagonist. Elder is Caracas, the mad city where violence is combined with intense affection. In La caja, the young Hatzín is the metaphor for Mexico. The director explains this artistic connection:

"It is a nation that is trying to find its own identity, it is still 'young' compared to other realities such as Europe and the United States. Mexico is trying to understand the direction it is taking, as happens to Hatzín who is looking for his identity and that of the body that was delivered to him. I think that if the film works, it is because there is something that unites all these 'boxes', which is the theme of identity. For me, the ending is optimism: he makes a decision, and the individual can decide after having faced everything, even difficult and terrible decisions. I'm usually very pessimistic in my films but this one is particularly optimistic." (3)

Hatzín is young, Mexico is young, independence was in 1821. Mexico has to live with a bulky, cumbersome, and arrogant neighbour. Hatzín has the same problem. He is alone. He thinks he has found a father, who is as bulky and arrogant as the noisy neighbour of Mexico. According to the author, the ending is optimistic. If Mexico could free itself from its egoistic neighbours, it could be the same success.

In Mexico, Lorenzo Vigas goes into particulars: the environment of immigration, the exploitation of workers treated as slaves:

“This is a horrible reality that I was reading about while writing the script. I read the stories of Mexican maquiladoras, how people escaped, and they warned the police, then they found many people who had been imprisoned for 20 years to work for free and were not allowed to go out, like slaves. I thought I had to shoot a movie about this situation. At first, I thought that I would show these people who could not go out, and the girl would run away, and then she would commit suicide. Then, I realized that not all maquiladoras are like this: some are good conditions for the workers. What I show in the film is therefore halfway between these two situations, but it is true that there are really tough working conditions and people are exploited for many hours." (3)

It is the social element, the challenging and disruptive aspect of the film. The life of illegal immigrants is not easy. Aliens are cruelly suppressed when they try to rebel when they ask for respect for human rights or what was promised to them. Mario has many despicable responsibilities. Hatzín does not understand and, as Elder, must for loyalty and love, solve the issue of the father, the real or fake one.

Hatzín also is a metaphor, he is a closed, introverted kid. It takes some time before to see him smile. He is always silent. His face is sad. It is possible to read a complicated past. Nevertheless, he does not give up, he is stubborn and intelligent. His angry gesture toward a woman may appear self-destructive. In the finale, he realizes the truth, picks up his box again, and comes back to his miserable existence in his village.

Mario has narrative schizophrenia. In the first part, he appears unselfish, compassionate, and kind towards immigrants. He helps them and accompanies them to work in the factories in the area. Nevertheless, it was fiction. He is exclusively an unscrupulous trader in human beings. His benevolent helpfulness disappears immediately. His job is to check if they are suitable for work. He must discard the incapables and destroy the hotheads. In this way, he uses Hatzín. He hosts him at home because he is capable and faithful. Above all, he can plagiarize him with the excuse of being his father. Mario is abominable. He exploits Hatzín weakness of longing for a father. Therefore, he utilizes his fragility to press him to do ignoble acts.

Mario is absolute evil: cynical, corrupt, ruthless, irascible. He is perfect, as Hitchcok said:

"... the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture.” (4)

Some sequences have social and introspective symbolism.

The habit of pain, the indifference to massacres, the coldness of the bureaucracy. “Sign here” are the only two words from the counter clerk when delivering the box to Hatzín.

In the dialogues between Hatzín and Mario: "es mentira" Hatzín says and for the first time he smiles. They speak like father and son.

Hatzín has the hope of finding his father. He takes off his shoes and compares his barefoot with that of Mario to see if there are any similarities.

The next step is the discovery of Mario's shady behaviour. Together they bury the dead of the factory in the desert: "Who is he?" "It's better not to know."

In the last section, Hatzín is aware of the future. He comes into conflict with Mario, and the slap arrives. The slap is a leitmotif in the films of Lorenzo Vigas. Slapping has become a criminal offence. In the past, it was a communicative way to approach the generations. Vigas has this thought. Rage attacks the father and smacks his son to affirm his educational superiority. The son is struck not only materially. In Los elefantes nunca olvidan the father slaps his son while he wants to shoot him, establishing his moral supremacy. In Desde allá, Armando punches Elder to incite him to commit a crime. In La caja, the slap is at the origin of an endless catharsis through a snowstorm. He risks his life. Saved in extremis, he understood, he chose wisely: it is time to leave Mario to his sneaky existence and go home.

The film's points of relevance are classic and already known, but their closures do not produce attention or stimuli. Despite the arguments in the story, expectations remain undeveloped.

The withdrawal of the box, the pursuit of the self-styled father, the initial attraction, subsequent disappointment, and coming back to the grandmother, are weakly linked. The direction is clean but does not create lucid and psychological tension as in Desde allá. There is rationality in the shots, in the wide-angles of Mexican villages with emigrants, the station, the bus. The camera is endlessly on Hatzín, but with feeling and discretion. The subjective is from his shoulders as if someone were protecting him.

The dialogues have many pauses; the details are often conformist, like the sound of footsteps on a black background with moonlight. Or the profiles reflected in the mirror. Infinite roads in very extreme long-shot push the vision beyond the director's logic.

1. Sigmund Freud, The case of Little Hans – Analysis of a Phobia in a Five–Year–Old Boyhttp://www.mhweb.org/freud/hans6.pdf Page 112

2. Sigmund Freud, The case of Little Hans – Analysis of a Phobia in a Five–Year–Old Boyhttp://www.mhweb.org/freud/hans6.pdf Page 45

3. https://www.badtaste.it/cinema/interviste/lorenzo-vigas-la-caja-e-un-film-ottimista-sul-tema-dellidentita-venezia-78/ translated by author

4. François Truffault, Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock