A great film and documentary, really shocking, brave and enlightening. But I finished it with this nagging feeling about some of the footage.
Certain moments such as the arguments between papa surf and the supporters and the last scene which I won't ruin did just feel staged to me.
Anyone else think this or am I just overly cynical?
Nah, they aren't staged."Papa smurf" didn't really care about it all, he really wanted to shine himself into the spotlight as the good guy when you can clearly tell he has fallen into corruption. That argument that he said near the end, how they are part of the goverment and slowly they will fix everything, was nothing but complete horsecrap.
shareNo it didn't feel staged to me. Papa Smurf seemed like a very poor deputy leader to me and couldn't deal with the public when they were angry . Ultimately He was a nasty piece of work.
shareSo was the doctor. The film was shot in such a way to make him look good. He wasn't. He ordered a murder. Participated in Kidnapping, breaking and entering. They tortured people. They sold Meth to finance their cartel. Trucks and guns don't just fall out of the sky in dirt poor parts of that region.
He knew the whole time.
The only town that was fed up and stood up to them rightfully so was depicted as crazy. You can not claim to be better than what you are fighting against if you are doing the very things which you say that you're against. Doc was right there in the middle of everything. He knew and even gave orders to commit the crimes.
The earlier town-meeting felt rather fake to me: 'hey dudes, which one of you is gonna disagree with the guys that just drove into town armed to the teeth'. Even the guys giving the big rousing speech to a traumatized community didn't bother removing their guns: that is not an offer of friendship, that is an open threat ('get rid of the army or we open fire in your town square')
In the meeting at the end some guys found their courage (due to the camera-team offering some measure of protection against immidiately getting shot?) and told them to let the government do their damn job already.
sadly i suspect the problem is that in Mexico the govt does not do its job
shareyour world in safe old USA must be so black and white.
shareYes. Quite a few of the meeting scenes plus where we saw the cartel members being apprehended, everyone acted like they were too aware that they were being recorded. I wasn't sure whether scenes were real or re-enactments.
"Don't make me throw this hummus... it's spicy!"
Well the first scientific fact to analyse would be they are actually aware they're being recorded.
Quite obvious, it doesn't mean it's staged, it means people act up for the camera being around. It wasn't hidden camera so I don't really get your point.
Anyone who watches liveleak knows exactly how locals apprehend banditos in south American and Mexico . They are usually an unrecognizable pile of sliced diced and pulverized human meat patty within about 2 minutes .
Another way to confirm your suspicions is the fact this "documentary " is on netflix. Aka the ministry of liberal socialist propaganda.
"Aka the ministry of liberal socialist propaganda."
i.e. Anything not associated with Rupert Murdoch or the Koch brothers? Don't make me laugh.
Yes. The grabby scene with Doctor and fan girl her with hand on rifle. The inside the car interogation with gun to head.Pool scene.
Still loved it!
It wouldn't be a great documentary if at least a few scenes didn't look staged.
shareI'm sure that if not staged a lot of it certainly has an air of artificiality about it based solely on the fact that the people on camera know they're being filmed for a movie.
________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fdZWbIsrFk
Obviously a viewer always needs to be a bit critical of anything coming from 'people who knew they were being filmed'. No-one wants to look bad on-camera.
A good filmer can mitigate that a bit by trying to get completely ingrained in the community he is filming. Filming hours and hours of footage untill everybody pretty much ignores you, and cutting away the mundane parts later (and with that cutting steer the story to make some point, but that's another discussion).
But what i think you should take into account is that in this case the most fake-looking i-cannot-believe-there-was-a-camera-there scenes (the torture in the car, feeling the girl up) are not things these people were neccesarilly trying to hide-at-all-costs. The vigilantees *want* to spread the message that they are merciless killers (whom they exactely want to scare and kill is another matter). Doc *wants* people to know he's still a stud (and at first he plays it off as a joke).
It felt totally staged on parts. Especially that vigilante at the beginning.
shareMaybe the director shot hours of footage and edited the most telling parts. I think the people saying this is staged are the same people that say the ISIS beheadings are staged. This is outlaw territory and unreal things like this happen all the time in Mexico. I read the book El Narco and the things said in that match anything in this documentary. When people find things hard to believe happened then they have to resort to conspiracy.
sharesadly with Americans (since your country seems to be world centre for conspiracy theories) that seems to be the case ref your last well put comment
share[deleted]
How naive are you Americans - any documentary is to some extent staged. Its like someone writing a diary - bound to be some bits when they are acting to an imaginary audience
shareStop with the "You Americans" trash. If you'd bother yourself with even a modicum of research, you'd know that the United States of America is a land of almost 10 million square kilometers and over 320 million people. If you think that many people spread over that many miles can be painted accurately with the same broad brush, then you're as naïve and deluded as the characters you're trying to depict.
shareI don't think it was staged but the director did say in interviews that he specifically edited the movie to feel like it was narrative-driven, which could give you a sense of artificiality.
share