MovieChat Forums > Juan de los muertos (2012) Discussion > Good, if not uneven zomcom, but just awf...

Good, if not uneven zomcom, but just awful people


Considering the subtext and the social commentary, and myself knowing very little about Cuban culture, their absolute apathy towards the murder of innocents, like the entire cast, was a little unsettling. If it's a cultural difference, then I guess it's just one more reason I'm glad I'm not in Cuba.

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Um, no "apathy towards the murder of innocents" is not a part of Cuban culture. No more than ZOMBIELAND's character's ripping each other off at gun point and abandoning each other means that Americans are indifferent to the sufferings of others. It's a dark comedy. Please don't read more into it than that. The fact that you're asking such a question comes uncomfortably close to racism.

"This nut thinks he's a vampire!"
THE NIGHT STALKER

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Well it was the writer-director-star who decided to portray a movie were the three heroes kill an elderly woman (albeit accidentally) and show no signs of empathy, they simply acknowledge the stupidity of the accident. Then the Lazaro character just flat out murders two people, one of which was wheelchair bound. Considering for many people this is their first glimpse at modern Cuba, and pretty much their only movie we know of, it's not healthy for the so-called protagonists to be so... blase' about murdering innocent people. They just seem way to comfortable with slaughtering each other, and the political track in the movie was frighteningly misguided and close-minded. IF that's racist then I'm rascist, but I saw what I saw and it didn't look pleasant, fiction or no.

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Maybe for many AMERICANS this is first CUBAN MOVIE they've seen. . . But, to draw real-life socio-cultural conclusions about an entire nation from a zombie-apocalypse comedy is a little out there, no offense. Look at some of the British Ealing comedies from the 1950s, the ones with Alec Guinness("The Lady Killers", "Kind Hearts and Coronets", etc.). Or British TV series like "Tales of the Unexpected." Would it be right, on the basis of THAT, to then say that you're afraid the British are a wife-poisoning, old-lady murdering, nation of serial killers?

Again, and with all respect, I think you're missing the point of satire.

"This nut thinks he's a vampire!"
THE NIGHT STALKER

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The difference is that the characters in The Ladykillers aren't portrayed as being in the right and the film makes sure to "puinish" them for their actions. It's clear that they're intended to be bad people, anti-heroes perhaps.

Juan of the Dead seems to think that its characters' actions are justified.

Art is a lie that tells the truth.

http://twitter.com/solmaquina

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"knowing very little about Cuban culture"

then you make blanket generalizations.



http://us.imdb.com/name/nm2339870/

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So because that this might be one of the first Cuban movies that ousiders (especially Americans) see, the director then has some responsibility to portray the setting in the best possible way?


Like the other poster said, it's dark comedy. You can find tons of examples of lack of empathy/morals in dark comedies made anywhere else in the world.

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[deleted]

this is like a year late, but I am a born and raised south Floridian, and my company employs many, many Cubans(I am caucasian, BTW), and let me tell you, they are some of the nicest, hard-working, intelligent people I know.
now, that being said, I am 100 percent in agreement with you, I thought the same thing when the innocent people started dropping by their hands, it didn't seem right to me, but I thought maybe its just a joke, you know, but they really take it too far, and I am no light weight, I watch all sorts of nasty horror movies where people evil to each other, not my first time to the rodeo, but this was really bizarre on how they were so nonchalant about the deaths of the people they knew, and people that they killed(non zombies)

just my 2 cents, but, yes, this Is also my first cuban movie I have seen, and I am almost 40. so if there are some out there, they aren't popular.
The makers of this movie should have known better that if you make a zombie flick, no matter how cheesy, it will get seen by a wide audience, eventually, and that they should have look with an outsiders POV on how they would have been perceived. One second you are caring for these people, then the next they are doing these horrible things to others....






http://www.facebook.com/mike.d.keith?ref=profile

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It's great, learning new things. For some reason I used to believe that Cuban was a nationality. Now I've learned that it is a race. I am now a better person than I had been. Gaia bless you sir!



Somewhere in Kenya, a village is missing it's idiot...

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how is that Racism? I thought same thing, but realized comedies and some movies do that with characters. Calling someone racist is cheap shot.

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you're looney tunes dude/lady, whatever u are.

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Agreed... some people can be so touchy. So they killed an elderly woman by accident and didn't cry. They are in the middle of an apocalypse, they have greater things to worry about. I thought the wheelchair thing was awful too but I have to confess I laughed a lot. And maybe if I were in that situation I'd probably end up doing the same thing. After all, in a zombie apocalypse you can't have people dragging you down, right?

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[deleted]

I can't think of many films that have actually made a huge impact on my beliefs or anything but zombie films are notorious for being full of social commentary and they handle it much better than a lot of other genres.

Romero's films, for example, are all about social commentary. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find a zombie film that people actually like that doesn't have an ounce of social commentary in it - be it about pollution, biological warfare or losing one's identity.

Art is a lie that tells the truth.

http://twitter.com/solmaquina

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Never quite thought about it but that is pretty accurate. It's hard to think of successful zombie flick that doesn't have some sort of social commentary, I guess you could say it is an essential part of zombie film making that if not included failure is imminent. Too bad all the hacks that churn out horribly bad zombie films don't know it.



225 Zombie flicks from 2000 to ?
http://www.imdb.com/list/l0fDojvcY5I



620 Good Horror Films From 2000-2012
http://www.imdb.com/list/XesAuiCFh7k/

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They did some awful things like stealing wheelchair and letting guy die, but that was films type of humor. I did not like that aspect, but liked most of the rest. Good movie. Look at tv show Walking Dead, a major character let a guy die after shooting him leg so he could escape. I just write it off a as something we have to put up with in many movies now. I do think the characters would have been better if there was more caring, but movie was so over the top that is just part of it.

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I agree that you cant judge a people based on any movie. But that example of Shane is what he was talking about. We knew Shane wasn't a good guy, and he wound up getting "justice" for his actions. But in context, all of them, except for the daughter were criminals.

Fact: 87.3% of IMDB users belong to the secret society of cynics.

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LMAO!!

A thought just occurred to me, lol, that between this movie,
and "Scarface", If I never met a Cuban(I've met hundreds, all good
people), I would think that they were all criminals, lol.

Not really funny in a Ha,ha way, but funny in a that's really
messed up way...






http://www.facebook.com/mike.d.keith?ref=profile

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So you would decide that based on two movies? Just so you know, a lot of Cubans did not even like SCARFACE,mainly because they felt it painted them in a bad light. Juan Of The Dead (which I still haven't seen,but would love to) is just a comic horror movie----you can't take it as a literal look at how Cubans really are, any more than you can take any of George Romero's zombie flicks are complete and accurate portraits of life in the U.S. Also, you have to keep in mind it wasn't made with a U.S. audience in mind, so they could have cared less about presenting some perfect picture of Cuban folks in it.


Here's some good Cuban films (actually made by Cubans) you should check out:

DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT
STRAWBERRY AND CHOCOLATE
THE LAST SUPPER
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
GUANTANAMERA

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I was making a joke!!!
did you even read my post?? I said that I know or met
dozens and dozens of Cubans who live here in South Florida
I live on the west of Florida, but most of the Cuban-American
population of Florida live in the Miami-Dade area on the East
of Florida. Our branch of my company in Miami probably has
like %50 or more Cuban-Americans working there.
I don't go there often, but having been with FDD-A for
20 years, I have known a handful of them and they are the
salt-of-the-earth.
In fact, I have never, outside of movie fiction,
heard of any Cuban that was a criminal.





http://www.facebook.com/mike.d.keith?ref=profile

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If it's empathy and humaneness you want, you may consider rethinking the zombie sub-genre as a whole. And as for some of the other comments about Cuban and American culture... people are people, and most people are merely doing the best they can with what they have.. be it in Cuba or in the U.S. "Apathy", "dark humor" and "shock value" go far beyond the boundaries of culture! Cheers! -JB

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Comedy. Their reaction was purely played for pitch-black comedic effect. It's not a subtle movie, any more than Shaun of the Dead is a subtle movie (actually, there are plenty of subtle moments in "Shaun" but the overall comedy isn't subtle. They kill a person. In a serious horror/drama, the proper reaction, of course, is sadness, wailing, self-recrimination, etc. In a normal comedy, they don't kill a person like that at all. In a black comedy, they kill a person and subvert the proper response to a situation like that by focusing on the ineptitude of the person who did it. Any other reaction -- weeping, soul-searching, rage -- would make absolutely no sense in a black comedy. The movie would have been badly damaged by a serious reaction.

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A lot of sensitive people seem to be getting really precious about your OP.

I agree with you, however. I was pretty surprised at how cavalier they were about death from the very beginning of the film (except Lazaro, who seemed to quite possibly be a sociopath).

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My take on it is that the reactions are a sarcastic approach to the degree of individualisation in Cuba, like charging to kill your loved ones could well be irony for the small level but extented capitalism that exists in every day cuban life, where almost everything is for sale (both cases an oxymoron in a communist society - of course I'm not trying to say that in market ruled western societies there is less individualisation, on the contrary I think - see for example nato massacres - however, current conditions in cuba and the small, street level nature of it make it more obvious there). The exaggerations in the movie help make the point, and it was done in a very funny way in my opinion, so well done to the director!

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