Socorro (Luisa Huertas), with a mop of frazzled gray hair, chain-smokes and drinks to oblivion. She’s an growing old civil rights lawyer quickly dropping her listening to and with a worsening downside the place she all of a sudden, unceremoniously, blacks out. Her condominium, scattered with an impossibly excessive variety of books, papers and over-filled ashtrays, is house to herself, her wayward, out-of-work journalist son, Jorge (Pedro Hernández) and his Argentinian spouse, Lucia (Agustina Quinci). Her dopey assistant, Sidarta (José Alberto Patiño), runs errands for her whereas carrying a trucker hat with a plague on the crown that spells his identify. On this small, cramped nook of Mexico, this patchwork household will get sucked into the vortex of Socorro’s obsession: discovering and killing the soldier who murdered her brother, fifty years in the past.
We Shall Not Be Moved – which takes its identify from the favored labor solidarity anthem popularized in the USA within the Fifties by Black civil rights activists – is a quietly devastating movie in regards to the domino impact of unresolved political trauma. By way of Socorro, function debut director Pierre Saint Martin Castellanos attracts a fierce parallel between victims of state-sanctioned violence and those who survive it, questioning all alongside what survival even means when life is ripped away.
In 1968, peaceable pupil protestors of UNAM and a number of other different universities in Tlatelolco have been massacred by the Mexican Armed Forces (actual casualty numbers are disputed, however survivors recommend someplace between 300 and 400). A type of victims was Socorro’s brother, and for many years, she has pursued justice — or what justice is on the market to her. “Justice on this nation is for the wealthy or these with energy,” she argues, and so she advocates as an alternative for a watch for a watch.
After we meet the scrappy, acerbic lawyer, she has, seemingly, given up the battle to seek out the assassin. Till at some point, when the son of a deceased previous colleague within the authorities reveals up at her condominium with a field. Inside, she finds {a photograph} of her, {a photograph} of a bunch of troopers, and a listing of potential perpetrators. A type of names is circled: Juan Agundez. Socorro instantly springs into motion by enlisting Sidarta to seek out Agundez and kill him. “I do not do this anymore,” he says. Regardless of. He owes her.
What follows is a weird cat and mouse thriller in contrast to something you have ever seen earlier than, as a result of the chase is not a lot between Socorro and the thing of her revenge however between herself and the fleeting pleasures of vengeance. Castellanos’s movie is a portrait of the desperation of discovering the wrongdoer in an inherently unjust system when the true goal of anger ought to in all probability be the system itself.
In the meantime, Jorge son struggles to seek out work, but additionally refuses to simply accept a job interview his spouse has gotten for him. Completely too dedicated to his ailing mom, he sees no downside with making a gift of his cash on the similar time that he berates her for pursuing the issues he allows. Candiani (Juan Carlos Colombo) calls Socorro every so often, smoking like a chimney whereas nonetheless strapped to a ventilator. He needs his son to let him die in peace. For some time, Castellanos has a tough time balancing these varied storylines and letting them work together organically, however when it occurs, the complete tapestry comes into place in heartbreaking totality.
With the help of César Gutiérrez Miranda’s miraculously photographed scenes, Castellanos sharply illuminates how energy damages victims each direct and oblique. As Socorro’s son finds problem ingratiating himself into the techniques that his mom so strongly opposed, he additionally can not assist however embolden his mom’s harmful obsession. Candiani appears certain for bodily demise partially due to how unhealthily he has hooked up himself to her trigger.
By way of these imperfect characters, we see how solidarity could be each a wholesome arbiter of progress and a detractor from the right here and the now. Is vengeance price combating for if it causes these enacting it to lose their very own lives? What if the individual you are chasing has no reminiscence of what they’ve completed? What does justice appear to be if its not pursued within the public eye, carried out in locations outdoors conventional channels?
At one level, Socorro convinces Lucia to assist her safe some paperwork by flashing her cleavage. “The issues we should do for a little bit justice,” Lu says. Castellanos makes us surprise if justice is actual when it could possibly additionally degrade those that search it. And if the federal government can not help – providing as little as 200,000 pesos as reparation – then, maybe, we should not be stunned when folks search for it in shadowy corners. Corners shot in stunning black and white. Too unhealthy proper and fallacious is not additionally as binary because the movie’s colour scheme.