Sin Nombre

(2009)

Directed by

Cary Fukunaga

Review by Zach Saltz

Like Gregory Nava’s El Norte, Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre profiles the journey of two youths from south of the border as they attempt to illegally enter the United States.  For a motion picture made and released in an era where illegal immigration lies at the hotbed of every major political and sociological debate, the film stays remarkably apolitical – even more so than Nava’s film, made in 1983.  Instead of dividing audiences by defending illegal immigration, Sin Nombre offers audiences a great, sprawling, universally compelling story about two lost souls in search of a new home and escape from their fractured and violent pasts.

The movie begins with two separate stories that eventually and invariably converge.  The first story involves a group of hoodlums in Southern Mexico.  With their ominous tattoos and brazen declarations of masculinity, they are reminiscent of the blackened Maori hooligans in Once Were Warriors (1995).  We are introduced to two of their young members, Willy, nicknamed El Casper (Edgar Flores), and his 12-year-old protégé, El Smiley (Kristian Ferrer).  We are at first not sure what to make of Willy; in an early scene, he greets his sleeping girlfriend, Martha Marlene (Diana Garcia) by politely asking for sex, and proceeds to hide her from the rest of the gang.  If his actions seem less than chivalrous we understand later, in a stunning and brutal encounter between the gang leader and Martha Marlene, that he keeps her away for her own good.

The other story involves Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran who is reunited with her father and uncle as they board a train full of immigrants headed to the Texas border.  They hope to eventually be reunited with Sayra’s sisters, who have successfully entered the United States and now reside in New Jersey, but Sayra is unsure of her father and his crudely-rendered map across the continent (New Jersey isn’t even on the map).  They sit atop the locomotive and watch the scenic surroundings pass them in a flash, recalling the lush imagery of David Carridine atop a train in Bound for Glory (1976) and the early scenes of Days of Heaven (1978).

Willy and Sayra eventually meet atop the train as she is being forcibly raped by the gang leader, Lil’ Mago.  When Willy saves her and pushes Lil’ Mago off the train, he knows that the gang will be after him; Smiley, who is questioned by gang leadership for not killing Willy on the spot, promises his allegiance to the gang by being willing to hunt Willy down himself.  Sayra, meanwhile, slowly befriends the tattooed brute who saved her life.  She first offers him food and conversation when others on the train are too afraid to approach him, and then boldly declares that she will follow him into America toward an unknown destination.  He reluctantly agrees, unsure why she would follow a wanted man, but makes her promise that she will ultimately find her way to New Jersey.

And so begins the real thrust of Sin Nombre, which is not the portrayal of exotic gang violence or the politically-charged issue of illegal immigration, but is rather is subtle and absorbing story about two desperate and alienated souls who stick their necks out for one another in their desire to escape from their violent and poverty-stricken societies.  The film wisely avoids making their journey north a love story – Willy’s heart is still broken from the death of his beloved Martha Marlene – but it is clear that the two need each other for survival and rely on each other for comfort and compassion.  Like Romeo and Juliet and even DiCaprio and Winslet’s characters from Titanic, their journey seems doomed from the start, but their characters are so scarred and yet so sympathetic to each other that it is nearly impossible to root against them.  This is not formula or manipulation on the screenwriter’s part; this is pure, classical, economical storytelling transplanted on to a moving train across Mexico.

Sin Nombre is an extremely ambitious film, and for this, writer-director Fukunaga must be commended.  The film contains vibrant and exciting action sequences, as when Smiley and the rest of the gang finally end up crossing paths with Willy and Sayra at a stop with eager boarder guards in the midst.  The journey to America for these two is essentially one large turf war, and Fukunaga makes it clear that in Mexico, gang warfare controls the flow of society at large.  Young Smiley’s intoxication with the brutish lifestyle of the gang illustrates how easy it is for young boys to be caught up with the romanticized image of gangs that eventually unfolds into mayhem and tragedy.  A key decision by Smiley at the end of the film, coupled with the last shots of the character, reveal the unfortunate direction that too many Mexican youths ultimately follow today.

And yet the movie remains rather subdued in its critique of Mexico, and as an action film, avoids the same jarring, rapid-style (and overused) styles used in City of God and Amores perros.  This is a subtle, sad motion picture that knows all too well that its protagonists are not superheroes able to effectively transcend their porous roots.  It is classical storytelling with a vivid palette, yes, but with a sudden, harsh overtone that only becomes apparent with the realization that Willy and Sayra’s story is universal – that thousands of immigrants with stories like theirs every day attempt, and most often fail, to get into the United States with hopes of a better life.  What a tragedy it is that these people have to make the same decisions Willy and Sayra must make, and that these decisions often prove the slim difference between life and death.

Sin Nombre is one of the very best films of the year.

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