El Crimen Del Padre Amaro is a movie about corruption in the Catholic Church and the personal struggle of priests between obedience and temptation. Padre Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a young ambitious priest sent to a small town to work in his first church. Though he has a genuine passion to serve the spiritual needs of the people in his community, he soon discovers that the other priests are immersed in scandal, from breaking celibacy to hiding guerrillas to laundering money from powerful drug lords to controlling the media. It isn't long before he becomes entangled in his own scandal: a love affair with a devout young woman (played by Ana Claudia Talancón) caught up in her own struggle between religious obedience and the temptations of the flesh.
This film does an excellent job of capturing the complexity of human emotion. Much of the action takes place within the characters, which is conveyed through excellent acting and careful attention to detail on the part of the director and cameramen. One of the things the director mentioned in the DVD's director commentary was how he tried to capture the glances of actors, along with their facial expressions. Facial expressions were especially informative during the many close-up shots. This created a very intimate and emotional tone.
Bernal delivers a compelling performance of deep internal struggle - private, complex, and emotional – between ambition and love, loyalty to the Church and uneasiness with corruption, and how to deal with a variety moral dilemmas. Is laundering money okay if you use it for a good cause? Is guerrilla warfare justified if you are fighting a criminal oppressor? How do you reconcile between duty to the (corrupt) church and devotion to its teachings? When is abortion justified? Ultimately, the real "crime" of Father Amaro is not the obvious breaking of his celibacy. His crime is his loyalty to a corrupt church rather than his own values, continuously running away and hiding from his situation instead of dealing with it, and letting his ambition get in the way of everything else that mattered to him.
This film does an excellent job of capturing the complexity of human emotion. Much of the action takes place within the characters, which is conveyed through excellent acting and careful attention to detail on the part of the director and cameramen. One of the things the director mentioned in the DVD's director commentary was how he tried to capture the glances of actors, along with their facial expressions. Facial expressions were especially informative during the many close-up shots. This created a very intimate and emotional tone.
Bernal delivers a compelling performance of deep internal struggle - private, complex, and emotional – between ambition and love, loyalty to the Church and uneasiness with corruption, and how to deal with a variety moral dilemmas. Is laundering money okay if you use it for a good cause? Is guerrilla warfare justified if you are fighting a criminal oppressor? How do you reconcile between duty to the (corrupt) church and devotion to its teachings? When is abortion justified? Ultimately, the real "crime" of Father Amaro is not the obvious breaking of his celibacy. His crime is his loyalty to a corrupt church rather than his own values, continuously running away and hiding from his situation instead of dealing with it, and letting his ambition get in the way of everything else that mattered to him.