Exploring cultural loss amidst the society’s fast changing living in the drug dealing action imagery describes the film El Mariachi. The film is a low-budgeted flick and this makes it outstanding and unbelievable because it is packed with many location changes, many characters, stunts, and even props ranging from guitars, to guns, to cars, and even prosthetics. It is a living testimony of a good film out of a not so good budget.
The main character (Carlos Gallardo) only wants to be a Mariachi and he tries his luck to a town where as destiny played a game of life and death with him, has been mistaken with a hustler who is trying to get the better of a drug lord.
The structure is very well defined. The objectives are clear and they are interestingly intertwined with each other’s goal creating a web of conflicts that resulted to action-packed sequences of running, chasing, and firings.
The director and cinematographer are so brave in shooting the film with no master shot, thinking that they only have to shoot the shots that they really want from the start for the benefits of cutting the expenses of negatives. What is really interesting for me in the film is that it didn’t look that it was shot with only a single camera. This is done by changing the positions of the camera as the action progresses which is definitely not easy and requires a lot of patience and passion.
From the point above, the main difference between El Mariachi and our local independent films is that El Mariachi didn’t attempt to look low budgeted or independent. You can actually always feel the commercial ‘feel’ of it all throughout the time. Specifically the camera set-up, it distinguishes the border of El Mariachi to ours in capturing consideration. The cast is the only element in the finished product I think that is very independent, all the rest, the technical manipulation, the entertaining and engaging plot and the action-romance genre are all commercial in nature. While the only independent inside the plot is the death of the protagonists’ love interest Domino (Consuelo Gomez).
Shooting most of the shots, if not everything, in a very limited film stock is a very risky thing to do in the production. There should be less or even no errors in the production and in the development and processing of the negative.
The result of this pop screenplay in a low budgeted and very independent mode of shooting is very impressive. El Mariachi tackles what has been lost in the life of the mariachi but we sure find the film as a film that we do not see every week or every month in our local movie houses or as something whose budget is so contained that gives yet a result so deceiving you wouldn’t even guess it’s cheap. El Mariachi is a first rate cheap film; and this is possible because of excellent production management.
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