I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Set in the beautiful, mountainous landscape of Guatemala, Ixcanul tells the sad, but compelling story of a young girl fighting with her cultural norms. Maria, the protagonist of the movie, has been promised, at the decision of her parents, to another young man she does not know and does not love. From an outsider's perspective, not understanding the culture of arranged marriages, it is quite difficult to identify with her and the emotions that she is feeling. Additionally, the use of the Mayan language, Kaqchikel, only heightens the disconnect between Maria and the audience of the movie. While the use of the indigenous, Mayan language, is beautiful, and is bringing light to an almost forgotten culture, it keeps the audience at a distance. Even though we want to truly understand Maria and her rebellion against her culture's traditions, we simply cannot. At least not at first. As the story progresses, I was able to more strongly connect with Maria and her sad situation. I was able to see past the language barrier and sympathize with her. Here she is, a young, promised woman, pregnant with another man's baby, trying to protect her family's reputation from what she has done. The audience is let in and able to develop a connection to Maria through the intimate scene with her mother. We may not be right there, but the audience is allowed to participate in these scenes. In the end, I really did appreciate the movie, its use of an indigenous, Mayan language, and its ability to slowly pull the audience into Maria's story. There is a level of complexity that at first kept the audience at a distance, and may have even turned some viewer's off to the movie. As the director allows moments of participation between Maria, Juana and the audience, it becomes a beautiful story that captures any audience.

For a Mayan family of three living on misty and sable volcano slopes, snakes come in both reptile and human form. Blessings are bestowed upon the family as well. 17 year old Maria dreams of life on the other side of the volcano. This place she dreams of, stretching from the other side of the volcano, across all of Mexico and into the United States, is nowhere that anyone she knows has ever been. Yet her pleasant life picking coffee, cooking and taking care of farm animals is too sedate for her. She intends to bolt from an arranged marriage with her father's boss. In doing so she sets herself up for confrontations between needs; company and independence, city and country, adventure and stability, Mayan and Spanish, and more. In this struggle the real character of Maria will become more apparent.If exquisite cinematography is your thing, you will like this unlikely yet appealing pairing of Guatemala and France. The acting is more convincing for the local talent, for even the best actors in the world would not make convincing Mayans. Kaqchikel is the film language. Ixcanul is available by Netflix snail mail delivery, a delivery that matches the gentle and pleasing pace of the film.

There is an authentic feel that runs through-out this story of Indigenous people living in Guatemala. They are poor, uneducated, but they have a strong sense of attachment to each other. The mother's love for her daughter is ample proof of that. All the young people want to find a way out – to the U.S. They want to escape their exploitation and poverty. All of this is poignantly captured.The story centres on a young woman who can't seem to make up her mind as to what she wants. And maybe this is one of the films defects – I just found her too catatonic and so lacking in expression. It gives too much of a void to the viewer, although this may have been intentional. She imparts a great sadness to this film.And at times the film just lingers too long on certain scenes.Nevertheless in terms of setting and characters in a remote part of the world this is highly original.

I've long been interested in Mayan mythology and culture, so when I heard about a new movie from Guatemala in the Maya language, I knew it was a film I wanted to see. "Ixcanul" is the Maya word for volcano, which looms large in the film, both physically and as a psychological barrier between this village and the rest of the world.Maria is a teenage girl, beautiful and bold. She lives with her parents, their only child, on a coffee plantation. Her parents have arranged her marriage to the plantation foreman, but neither seem particularly enthused about it. Instead, Maria dreams of escaping to the United States with a local worker. Despite her best attempts to get Pepe's agreement to take her with him North, she never secures a committed response. Her actions, however, have significant repercussions for her and her family.This could be a film about the uncaring and unsympathetic corporate owners of the plantations, or it could be about the ignorance of peasant life in the Guatemalan villages, or it could be a film that romanticizes North American culture and lifestyle, but it is none of these things. What it is, is an intimate and honest story of a brief moment in time of a family caught on the crossroads of tradition and modernity. "Ixcanul" is Guatemala's first entry in the Academy Awards for Foreign Language Film, and it certainly deserves to win. I am intrigued by the language and have a few unanswered questions, so it is likely I will pick this one up for the collection when released.