Film Screening: "Machuca" With director Andrés Wood March 13, 2006

Director Andrés Wood introduces a showing of his film Machuca at the Pacific Film Archive on March 13.

Exploring the Im/Possibilities of Boyhood Friendship During the Last Days of the Allende Government
By Cheryl Holzmeyer

Andrés Wood, director of the Chilean hit “Machuca,” drew on layers of childhood memories and more recent conversations to create his film. During the question and answer session after a showing at Pacific Film Archives, Wood avoided explaining scenes in the movie. At some point, he said, the film had to have a life of its own.

“Machuca” — which was chosen as Chile ’s entry for best foreign language film at the 2005 Oscars — has had a life of its own. Set in Santiago during the last days of Salvador Allende’s presidency, the film explores the contradictory, layered friendship of middle-school aged Gonzalo, who comes from an upper-middle class background, and Pedro, a new classmate from a nearby shantytown. Their relationship unfolds amidst the growing social turmoil and overt class conflict that leads to Augusto Pinochet’s U.S.-supported coup and Allende’s suicide.

Both boys attend St. Patrick’s English School for Boys, an institution modeled after St. Georges, the school Wood attended during that period. Pedro only recently started at the school, along with a handful of other boys from the shantytown, as part of an idealistic experiment in social integration by the school’s principal, Father Whelan. Determined that the boys will be equal and get along while at school, Father Whelan chastises them when tensions surface and name-calling and fighting break out. He seems determined to overcome the inequalities of Chilean society beyond the walls of St. Patrick’s through the force of Christian ethics and committed idealism at a time when left-wing Marxists and the right-wing bourgeoisie are clamoring for civil war.

Pedro and Gonzalo start to become friends after another boy attempts to ignite a fistfight between them and Gonzalo is unable to hit Pedro. Separated by class and ethnicity — Gonzalo is of Spanish and Pedro of indigenous descent — they go from hanging out together at school to visiting each other’s homes and families. They attend political rallies in downtown Santiago , where Gonzalo is introduced to socialists from Pedro’s shantytown. Another day, they drink cans of condensed milk by a river with an older girl from the shantytown. She takes turns kissing each of them, and they learn to kiss her back — drinking condensed milk, smearing it around their lips, and passionately kissing again.

At one point Pedro stays over at Gonzalo’s house and borrows a volume of The Lone Ranger and Tonto. The question that hangs in the background is whether whites and Indians can be friends — a query that resurfaces later during a verbal fight between Gonzalo and a drunken man in Pedro’s shantytown. The man scoffs at their avowed friendship, telling Pedro that in five years his friend will be in college, while he’ll be scrubbing toilets; in 10 years his friend will be working for his father’s company, while he’ll still be scrubbing toilets; and in 15 years his friend will run his father’s company, while Pedro will still be scrubbing toilets.

The film also shows some of the difficulties of daily existence during the waning days of Allende’s government, from food shortages that compel those with means to turn to the black market, to the on-going, grinding poverty of the majority who subsist at the lower rungs of the economic order.

As tensions mount in the streets and in the media, Father Whelan holds a meeting with parents of St. Patrick’s students. Many are angry at his attempts to move toward integrating the school, even describing it as brainwashing and manipulating the children by mixing them with “people they don’t need to know.” Gonzalo’s mother chimes in, asking the priest why he wants to mix “apples and pears,” though she claims she doesn’t think that one is better or worse. A father wonders who is paying for the poorer students’ tuition, and questions the school’s financial solvency given this new arrangement. Another father says he thinks the situation is “paternalism.” It’s not good to give people what they haven’t worked for, he claims. People don’t want to be given what they haven’t worked for.

Finally, Pedro’s mother, who is seated in the back of the room, rises and speaks. She describes how her family once lived as campesinos on a cattle rancher’s property, and whenever an animal would die, the cost would be deducted from her family’s food budget. They were blamed for anything bad that befell the ranch and were treated as animals themselves. So they moved to Santiago . But they are still treated like animals. They are still the scapegoats, she observes, even at this religious school. She wonders whether things will ever be different. “But no one will blame you for not changing,” she concludes.

At which point a well-coifed woman in the front row bolts to her feet and starts screaming, “Listen to her bitterness! Listen to her Marxist bitterness!”

Answering questions with help from Professor Beatriz Manz, of Geography and Ethnic Studies, Mr. Wood discussed the relationship between the film and his own schooling at St. George's School in Santiago.

And the gathering devolves into acrimonious pushing and shouting.

Later, during an increasingly militant National Front demonstration, the girl from Pedro’s shantytown who taught the boys to kiss ends up verbally clashing with the fashionable female friends of Gonzalo’s mother. When his mother tries to defend the girl, the girl insults her as well and later repeatedly tells Gonzalo that his mother is a whore. Events seem to be unraveling the tenuous relationships that they have developed, sweeping up their individual motivations and conventional self-understandings in the larger frames of interpretation that are gripping Chilean society.

Pinochet’s National Front eventually effects a coup d’état. Officers take over the school, expelling the students from the shantytown, among others, and wresting authority from Father Whelan. In a final stand-off with the officers, Father Whelan enters a school church service where National Front officers and the students are seated. He goes to the front of the chapel where the Holy Communion wafers are stored and eats every last one of them. Then he blows out the candle burning there and declares that God has departed. As he leaves, walking slowly down the aisle, Pedro stands up and thanks him. Father Whelan stops, looks over at Pedro, and nods. At which point the other students rise and also thank him.

After Whelan’s departure — and presumably his execution — the school is run by the military. The students are told that, henceforth, they will focus on their studies and nothing else. Meanwhile, the media declare that life has returned to normal.

Toward the end of the film, Gonzalo rides his bike to Pedro’s shantytown. When he arrives, he finds that National Front officers are raiding the shantytown, shooting men and herding women and children onto trucks. He sees the girl who taught him to kiss and called his mother a whore fighting with the officers to protect her father. She throws her body over his on the ground, to protect him. They end up shooting her in the chest, while Pedro and Gonzalo watch. Then an officer sees Gonzalo and tells him to get moving, mistaking him for one of the boys from the slum. He protests that he doesn’t live there, “Look at me! Look at me!” he says. The officer looks at his light complexion and clothing, his stylish sneakers, and realizes he’s made a mistake. Gonzalo locks eyes with Pedro one last time and then rides off on his bicycle.

After the film, Wood mentioned that “Machuca” has played a significant role in helping older and younger generations in Chile converse about the past. He added that his school was the only private school in Chile taken over by the military, presumably due to the experiment in social integration. They ran it for four years. Today many people say that the attempt at integrating students was a failure all around, for everyone concerned. Wood isn’t so sure.

Andrés Wood is the director of “Machuca.” He screened his film at UC Berkeley on March 13.

Cheryl Holzmeyer is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at UC Berkeley.

Mr. Wood talking with filmgoers after the screening.