In a scene that can only be described as a piece of virtuoistic movie-making: the past, present, and future of a vanquished people are conjured up by visual means with one unbroken pass of the camera. Late in the night, Don Plutarco(Angel Tavira) answers his grandson's question about returning home with a story that spans the breadth of time. It's a campfire tale not meant for roasting marshmallows; a homespun creation myth rendered by the elder which coincides with the sudden departure of the grandfather as the scene's focal point, when the camera tilts down, then passes slowly across an expanse of fire and grassland. Moving to the right, moving away from the human subjects, the distance between the disembodied voice and its physical source creates a spatial chasm that denotes fluid time, as the grandfather narrates about an epoch in the future which he might not live to see. The old man's expiration is represented by a tree, as the camera's ongoing verticality then turns towards the heavens, at the moon, which transforms Don Plutarco into a memory, a voice-over. From deep space, what transpires around the campfire(the smoke billowing off the ground has a prehistoric look) is the past, after all.
Near the end of "El Violin", Don Plutarco tells the captain(Dagoberto Gama), "The music is over," and closes his violin case, at gunpoint. As he makes eye-contact with the captured resistance fighters(his son included) being escorted by force into a holding cell, the violinist realizes that he had become a collaborator for the enemy against his own volition. Earlier in the film, the Hidalgo men(Plutarco and Cenaro, played by Gerardo Taracena) perform as a guitar and violin combo to disinterested locals who ignore the third Hidalgo, Don Plutarco's grandson, in his approachment for spare change. Although the violinist helps the resistance in an auxiliary capacity, he's a performer first, who succumbs to the lure of a captive audience, as in the scene when the old man puts on an outdoor recital for the laxing soldiers. Even worse, Plutarco is delighted by the captain's purported love for music, perhaps reminding him of his own son, as both blood relative and blood-shedder both use wartime as an excuse to pursue this exalted abstract language of melodious sound. For awhile, the violinist forgets his agenda, and smiles, in the midst of their affable exchange. The two men clearly enjoy each other's company. The captain never suspects that Don Plutarco has political ties to the local militia.
But lest the grandfather forget, the captain puts on his helmet before he takes leave, rupturing this temporality of common ground, propagated by the universal human need for art. With his military regalia completed by the finishing headgear, Don Plutarco's friend has the look of institutionalized murder, but he grants the old man permission to check on his crops; the cornstalk fortress that holds a secret stash of ammunition. To make room for the bullets, the old man removes his violin and lays it to rest in the pinebox crate. It's a fitting gesture, this burial, since the violin, once symbolizing the music of the tyrannized, now epitomizes the music of collusion. Don Plutarco realizes this, after the vanishing act in the cornfield(on his return trip to retrieve the violin), when the captain emerges from the compound with his stolen instrument in the autocrat's clutches. Through no fault of his own, the intelligence he acquired about the military's propsed ambush on the resistance fighters had arrived too late, but in spite of his innocence, Don Plutarco feels the weight of perceived traitorship bearing down on him, as his son and brothers-in-arms file past the disgraced musician. That's because his innocence has an egregious technicality; he had fiddled for the enemy, and liked it.
Near the end of "El Violin", Don Plutarco tells the captain(Dagoberto Gama), "The music is over," and closes his violin case, at gunpoint. As he makes eye-contact with the captured resistance fighters(his son included) being escorted by force into a holding cell, the violinist realizes that he had become a collaborator for the enemy against his own volition. Earlier in the film, the Hidalgo men(Plutarco and Cenaro, played by Gerardo Taracena) perform as a guitar and violin combo to disinterested locals who ignore the third Hidalgo, Don Plutarco's grandson, in his approachment for spare change. Although the violinist helps the resistance in an auxiliary capacity, he's a performer first, who succumbs to the lure of a captive audience, as in the scene when the old man puts on an outdoor recital for the laxing soldiers. Even worse, Plutarco is delighted by the captain's purported love for music, perhaps reminding him of his own son, as both blood relative and blood-shedder both use wartime as an excuse to pursue this exalted abstract language of melodious sound. For awhile, the violinist forgets his agenda, and smiles, in the midst of their affable exchange. The two men clearly enjoy each other's company. The captain never suspects that Don Plutarco has political ties to the local militia.
But lest the grandfather forget, the captain puts on his helmet before he takes leave, rupturing this temporality of common ground, propagated by the universal human need for art. With his military regalia completed by the finishing headgear, Don Plutarco's friend has the look of institutionalized murder, but he grants the old man permission to check on his crops; the cornstalk fortress that holds a secret stash of ammunition. To make room for the bullets, the old man removes his violin and lays it to rest in the pinebox crate. It's a fitting gesture, this burial, since the violin, once symbolizing the music of the tyrannized, now epitomizes the music of collusion. Don Plutarco realizes this, after the vanishing act in the cornfield(on his return trip to retrieve the violin), when the captain emerges from the compound with his stolen instrument in the autocrat's clutches. Through no fault of his own, the intelligence he acquired about the military's propsed ambush on the resistance fighters had arrived too late, but in spite of his innocence, Don Plutarco feels the weight of perceived traitorship bearing down on him, as his son and brothers-in-arms file past the disgraced musician. That's because his innocence has an egregious technicality; he had fiddled for the enemy, and liked it.