Educational Media Reviews Online

Compadre opens with the Swedish filmmaker returning after a 15 year absence to his friend’s home in the outskirts of Lima, Peru. In 1974, he had met Daniel Barrientes when Daniel was scavenging through a garbage pile and Mikael was on his first trip to Peru. He returned in 1991 with a camera and succeeded in making an earlier film about the man and his family. Now, he returns10 years later, where he is greeted with great warmth and a slight inference of resentment. Midway through the daughter for whom he is a compadre, states bleakly: “If this were a real movie . . . it would have a happy end, but this one is all sad.”

Daniel, a polio victim, is a charismatic, feisty, caring, but ultimately impoverished family man who drives a motorcycle taxi while Nati, his spouse, works as a cleaning woman. Their low status preoccupies them and their children, especially when they are juxtaposed with the filmmaker who has befriended them. One daughter is ‘phobic’ about uniforms and clings to her radio announcer husband even though he ‘suffocates’ her. The other daughter does the hard labor of making pottery in a kiln. The two sons are more distant from the film maker, who clashes with their father. At one point, Daniel complains that Mikael is ‘whiter and happier’ and asks why the film maker cannot purchase a motorcycle engine for him? Mikael complains in voice-over that ‘poverty threatens their friendship’ and leads them into the ‘dead-end of injustice.’ After a central impasse when Daniel refuses to continue to cooperate with the filming, Mikael seeks out other family members to smooth the way, and eventually, the two men make up. At Mikael’s urging, the whole family visits the mountain community where Daniel was born and to which he has not returned for over 45 years.

This is a very interesting film on many levels. The basic subject matter of Peruvian working class family life is well dramatized – each family member holds viewers’ attention with clarity and intelligence, and their condition is well documented. The economic differences between the film maker and his subjects are always at the center; even if we don’t know as much about the film maker’s condition, enough can be surmised to make the comparison full. Both sides approach with a distinctive simplicity reflective of their backgrounds. Virtually every scene is complicated by the camera, often handled by the film maker himself. The exhibiting of all manner of documentary ethical challenges around naiveté, manipulation, personal space, friendship, and intimacy constantly pushes the viewer to consider these issues of communication in the most complex way possible. There are scenes of high drama such as Daniel arguing that he should be paid for his work on the film, or the film maker breaking down in tears while telling a story of another Peruvian he has known. Inevitably, the film forces the viewer to ponder the quality of the representation and dramatic structure, the accuracy of the interpretation of each individual’s life or what is elided, and the extent to which other viewers are taken in and over which issues. The interesting technical insertion of ‘moving pictures’ made from collages of still images adds much to the overall sense of the work as a puzzle. Recommended for all libraries and especially for higher institutions where film studies and social class studies are prominent.