Mexican film shows nature through a child's eyes

This Mexican-made movie, which challenges the definitions of “feature film” and “documentary,” must be the best bang-for-the-budget ever made. Besides four principal “actors,” a handful of very cooperative wild animals and a host of marine life, the filming involved only two crew members: the director-cameraman and the sound recorder.

And yet it tells the simple heartwarming story of the bond between a father and son as effectively as any Hollywood spectacle, without any of the manipulative sentimentality. And it captures the gorgeous colors and simple grace of the natural world without wasting a dime on set design or special effects.

“Alamar” will be shown Thursday at 7p.m.  in the Historic Yuma Theatre, 254 S. Main St. The screening, part of the Arizona Western College Foundation's Thursdays at the Theatre, includes an independent short film and a hosted discussion. Languages are Spanish and Italian with English subtitles. Run time of the feature is 73 minutes; admission is $5.

Bonding at its best

An Italian woman on vacation in the Yucatan falls for a local fisherman of Mayan descent, and they conceive a child together (the trio played by real-life parents and son). Once the romantic intensity has worn off, though, both lovers realize that neither can live in the alien world of the other, and they part.

When the boy is 5, he gets one chance to go with his father for a few days to experience the timeless life of the fishermen who live along the Banco Chinchorro of the Mexican Caribbean, home of the largest coral reef in the Americas and the second largest in the world.

Along with a local, the middle-aged but very fit Nestor, they fish by hand in the abundant waters and dive for lobsters, spearing them among the coral formations. While they clean the catch on board their dingy, they are kept company by expectant hovering gulls and by the breathtaking sky.

At night they sleep in a one-room hut build over the water on stilts. For dinner they deep-fry barracuda and throw the scraps to a familiar crocodile from the nearby mangrove swamp.

About relationships

Entirely without pretension, filmmaker Pedro González-Rubio presents his themes about the relationships among people and about their place in nature.

At one point the father and son make friends with a cattle egret, feeding it cockroaches from the reed walls and teaching it to perch on their forearms. However, the bird isn't from that area and is only migrating through, a poignant reminder that the time between father and son is brief, just as it is for all of nature's creatures.

Similarly, the setting is the most rustic and minimalist imaginable, paralleled by the austere production values and spare narrative of the film itself. Beneath the surface of González-Rubio's pure cinematic effort is a deep love of an endangered traditional lifestyle and especially for a specific place, an unspoiled potential World Heritage site not far from Mexico's hottest tourist development.

Without falling into the pitfalls at either extreme of filmmaking – sanitized nature documentary or contrived storytelling – “Alamar” eloquently brings home the priceless quality of these basic assets that are so undervalued in the modern world of technology and commodity.