Machuca (2004) - Great personal investment and heart beats behind Wood's riveting coming-of-age drama

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Big Flop Movie of the Year + Best Chilean Movie of the Year + Best Coming-of-Age Movie of the Year + Best Political Movie of the Year  

The three excellent child actors in Andrés Wood's Machuca peak up from, for some reason, a piece of cardboard on this poster for the film

  
Gonzalo is a boy from the better part of the middle class in Santiago, Chile in 1973, when the situation in the country under its Socialist president Salvador Allende becomes so bad that the boy's private school takes in some students from poor backgrounds, - among them a new friend named Machuca.

Machuca is written by Mamoun Hassan (The Good Life/La Buena Vida (2008)), Roberto Brodsky (El Brindis (2007)), Eliseo Altunaga (Between Two Hurricanes/Entre Ciclones (2003)) and its great Chilean co-writer/co-producer/director Andrés Wood (Historias de Fútbol (1997)). It is a film that is auspicious for older children (age 12 and up) and adults alike.
The context is complicated and heated politically, but the core narrative of friendship in spite of outer circumstances, and of life as an 11 year-old, is simple and compelling. Gonzalo, Machuca and Silvana, the girlfriend of Gonzalo, are played with distinguished empathy by Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna (The Magician/El Mago (2014)) and Manuela Martelli (My Last Round/Mi Último Round (2011)), and among the adult actors especially Ernesto Malbran (Sub Terra (2003)) as the idealistic Father McEnroe does a memorable job. 
With very credible staging, the story builds tension steadily; SPOILER the audience member familiar with the period will be able to predict how the school and the boys' friendship will develop towards a very sad precipice.
Machuca powerfully shows the results of excessive political enmity and racism. It is an outstanding film.

 

Related post:

 

Andrés Wood: 2004 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

Watch a 3-minute clip from the film with English subtitles here

Cost: 1.7 mil. $
Box office: 3.1 mil. $
= Big flop (returned 1.82 times its cost)
[Machuca premiered 24 February (Switzerland) and runs 121 minutes. Wood rehearsed with the child amateur actors for 7 months prior to filming. Shooting took place in Santiago, Chile. Wood has stated that shooting took place only on sundays, - due to the small budget. The film opened #73 to a 4k $ first weekend in 1 theater in North America, where it peaked the following week at #67, never widened to more theaters and only grossed 26k $ (0.8 % of the total gross). Its biggest markets were production country 2.2 mil. $ (71 %), Spain with 338k $ (10.9 %) and the UK with 213k $ (6.9 %). The film was Chile's official Oscar entry of the year but went unnominated. It was nominated for a Goya award, among other honors. Wood returned with The Good Life/La Buena Vida (2008). Mateluna returned in La Vida Es una Lotería (2002, TV-series), JPT: Justicia para Todos (2004, TV-series) and theatrically in Pega Martín Pega! (2007); Martelli in Like a Crashed Plane/Como un Avión Estrellado (2005)). Machuca is fresh at 89 % with a 7.54/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Machuca?