The border between the U.S. and Mexico casts those who try to cross it into a purgatory between two worlds that are, in many ways, vastly different. The borderland is where people wander and are never seen or heard from again. They may leave behind a foot print, a shred of clothing caught on a branch, a crushed water bottle on the ground. Some are migrants who try to escape purgatory by climbing over one of its high walls, in the hopes of finding a better life on the other side. Some are trapped in this purgatory because they've become hopeless casualties of the War on Drugs. They languish in the in-between and use narcotics to numb the pain of being stuck. Minutemen, garbage collectors, social activists, and border patrol agents are like guards at the gates of this purgatory. The vastness of the limbo between both countries is explored in Purgatorio: A Journey into the Heart of the Border. The documentary/essay film meditatively explores the landscape and lives of the U.S.-Mexico border. Through director Rodrigo Reyes' point of view and narration, the border is a desolate, mythical underworld where people wait to pass from one world to another, which was created, the film points out, by the absurdity of the man-made, arbitrary lines that separate people.
In the opening of the film, Reyes, who narrates, asks us to imagine a world that was open and natural, "when borders did not exist." He describes a world of raw wonder, fear and mystery. A montage of vibrant images from nature fills the screen, followed by images of children playing, which are then replaced by footage of the vastness of a desert. The camera pans to a shot of a high wall that stretches far into the distance. The film explores the secret darkness that humans have lying at the bottom of their hearts. When humans entered this darkness, the film tells us, we lost our common language. We lost the connection that we all had to each other before we started separating ourselves from each other with borders, with lines drawn between us to keep us isolated. Reyes explains that our world has become fragmented and disconnected because of the arbitrary borders we place around ourselves. "Draw a line in the sand," Reyes says in the narration, "and it will provoke intense, passionate struggles." Some of the people interviewed for the film are trapped denizens of a dismal netherworld. A weary drug addict's experience is representative of the film's themes. He talks about his drug habit as though he were describing being trapped in purgatory. Outside of the drugs he uses, he has no identity. He describes drifting away from his family, and having no one. He tells the camera, "Life doesn't matter anymore... You wake up over and over into the same thing". Much can be said about the woman who lives in a border town mental hospital, or the various victims of drug violence that Purgatorio shows. There is little recourse from the misery, from the feelings of being trapped between two different worlds, but the film doesn't feel miserable. In its own lyrical way, Purgatorio makes the dilapidated towns, desolate dirt roads, bodies in the street, the coldly impenetrable wall between the U.S.-Mexico border border, into something mythical, like an underworld described in Dante's Inferno.
Directing his film from a stylistic point of view deflects most of the politics surrounding the conditions of the border, but the loose, dreamy aesthetics place the story on a human level. Beyond its use as an allegorical symbol, there is no wider context given to the border, or the governments on either side of it. We get to know the woman in the mental hospital, the garbage collector who moves objects placed as markers for migrants walking over the border while being conscious that doing so could put peoples lives in danger. We get to know a Mexican news reporter who says most of the news he writes about involves violent crime. And two men with backpacks who spend the film standing next to a large wall at the border, lament that their lives are all about work. But in the end, there is hope for escaping purgatory, when we are shown one of the men climbing over the wall and falling stateside. We are never told the names of the people who appear in the film, but we get to know them intimately.
Purgatorio isn't a documentary in the normal sense of the term, because of its subjective, stylistic nature. Viewing its subjects through the social lenses of race, class, politics, global economics, has been done when looking at migration and the U.S.-Mexico border as subjects by others in the past. By looking at the border symbolically, Reyes was able to see that the underlying problem with the border was its arbitrary existence. With an emphasis on the strange landscape, we are reminded that there are no borders in nature, that the borders of nations, the walls used to keep people out of them, and the ideologies and points of view that place people on one side or another, are nothing more than human constructs. Reyes makes his point beautifully.
The DVD
The Video: The film was shot in HD with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and the DVD is enhanced for 16x9 TVs. There is quite a bit of detail in the image, and some of the shots have a glowing, painterly effect. The Sound: The stereo sound is effective, especially in scenes that evoke an eerie, otherworldly feel. During a shot of electrical generators, the low-pitch humming of the machines lends the soundtrack a foreboding sound. This effect works even when the sound is evenly spread among multiple speakers. There are both Spanish and English subtitles throughout the film.
Extras: There are no extras. However, there is a theatrical trailer. Final Thoughts Purgatorio: A Journey into the Heart of the Border works well because it takes subjects that are often explored in a journalistic form and turns them into allegorical symbols that point out the absurdity of man-made borders, and the toll they take on the lives who live near them, or must cross them. Director Rodrigo Reyes' approach is lyrical and haunting, drawing comparisons of his work to Dante's Inferno. The DVD release doesn't have many features, but it's worth owning.
