Even the Rain (2011)

Wonderful Movie

Truly the worst movie I've ever seen in a theater

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I did not expect this film to be the way that it is. I expected the film to be about only water and potentially a water crisis. I never expected that Christopher Columbus would be involved. I did enjoy the fact that they placed in parallels between the film about Christopher Columbus and the Bolivian Water Crisis. Overall, I really enjoyed the film. I found it strange that there was no clear "bad guy" in the movie. In most American films, there is a good guy and a bad guy. Mostly the good guy wins. In this film, everyone seemed to be both good and bad. The native people were fighting for their water, but they also attacked people before they were attacked. The water company that was coming in was helping the people to get water, but it also charged a great deal of money to the people. The government had to outsource the water, making the people angry, but if the government hadn't done so, the people would have no water at all. Also, just like Christopher Columbus came into America and exerted his power over the natives, so do others. The water company from America and Britain comes in and places a large price on all of the water, making it almost impossible to buy. Also, the production team working on the movie comes in and imposes themselves on the people. They pay them only two dollars a day while the rest of the crew lives in a highly expensive hotel. In the beginning of the film, it seemed like Costa cared more about the film and about the money then Sebastian, who seemed to care about the people more. But as the film continues, Sebastian becomes more focused on the film. And Costa risks his life to save Belen, a girl who was an extra on the set.

Makes people understand Indian culture, how capitalism works, shows art and real life, what politics is about. There is much here to savor, including scenes reminiscent of the best of Werner Herzog and Costa-Gavras, Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie, and Jorge Sanjines' Yawar Maliku (Blood of the Condor). Three beautiful male actors fight for hearts and minds. Gael Garcia Bernal gets a run for his money from his co-stars, especially newcomer Aduviri as the pint-sized water activist. There is a late scene where Costa tries to get Sebastian over a depression that's left him temporarily bedridden. No, they don't go there, but one can fantasize – it's the ultimate reason we keep going to the movies.

This film relates something about the privatisation of water in Bolivia and the enforcement of that private ownership by the government. Water, previously owned by the people through their government, then water rights sold to a trans-national corporation by operatives within the government. Lest we think that this sort of thing only happens in the lesser elsewhere, please note the following:A US judge declares Detroit residents have no right to water 1 October 2014In a ruling on Monday, the federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy of Detroit declared that workers, youth and retirees have no "fundamental right" to water, as he threw out a lawsuit challenging the city's policy of shutting off tens of thousands of residents from one of the most fundamental necessities of life.

In Iciar Bollain's film 'Even the Rain', a Mexican film crew travel to Bolivia to make a film about the historical exploitation of indigenous Americans by European settlers. But they're motivated by the low cost of filming, and, when the locals who play the movie's numerous extras get involved in a political revolt, it's unclear whose side the film-makers are really on. The crew includes an idealistic director, his hard-nosed producer and mentor, and a cynical, boozy leading actor: but the characters are in no way clichés, and the way that they develop is a key part of the real film's success. Gael Garcia Bernal is as usual good as the director, but the whole cast is excellent, the film raises serious questions about the control of common assets, and even the film within a film appears to be something one would pay to see. The sad thing is that the issues explored - a world where even the rain is privatised - are very real in the actual world.