EL MARIACHI
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1993 Frank Maloney
EL MARIACHI is written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. It stars Carlos Gallardo, Consuelo Gomez, and Peter Marquardt. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Rated R, due to violence.
EL MARIACHI is not a great film, but it is a remarkable one, and it may be the harbinger of an important new filmmaker. The filmmaker is Robert Rodriguez, an Austin, Texas, writer-director. His plan was to make EL MARIACHI on the cheap, sell it to the Mexican video market, take the profits and make two more Spanish-language films which he could parlay into a slightly larger English-language film, and then break into Hollywood. To raise part of the $7,000 he budgeted for his first film, he volunteered for a drug experiment at his school, the University of Texas, Austin; four weeks later he had $3,000, a script, and one of his actors, Peter Marquardt (who would play the gringo drug lord). He and his co-producer and star, Carlos Gallardo, shot the film in a week, using mostly local townsfolk in a border town, Cd. Acuna, Coahuila. For dolly shots, Gallardo pushed Rodriguez in a borrowed wheelchair as Rodriguez shot with a borrowed camera. He filmed in 16-mm and edited in video. He inserted footage of a mostly inert pit bull whenever the narrative was out of synch with the film.
His film style appears to be modeled on the Coen brothers, or perhaps satirizing it: violent subject matter, some black humor, fast camera movements, fish-eye distortions, and speeded-up action sequences. As for a moral center, the film is a more than a little tentative. This is not Peckinpah, not yet at least, but the mariachi of the title does have a sense of who he meant to be and who he became instead. But mostly this is an action film that puts its energy into being energetic. Still the characters, especially the mariachi and the woman bar-owner he falls in with are interesting characters, credible and likable. The plot, the characters, the editing, the use of music, the direction, and the inventiveness in the face of a nearly cash-free production are worthy of our attention.
Rodriguez' plan, by the way, went somewhat awry when EL MARIACHI unexpectedly attracted a studio bidding war. When the dust settled, Columbia had agreed to distribute the film to twenty U.S. cities in Spanish with English subtitles and signed Rodriguez to work on a $5 million or $6 million remake (or sequel -- I've read both).
Admittedly, EL MARIACHI has a freak-show element to it -- not unlike Dr. Johnson's crack about the woman preacher ("The wonder, sir, is not that she preach well, but that she preach at all") -- but there is something under the student razzle-dazzle and the gee-whiz appeal of the story of the film's making that attracts me, entertains me, and makes me hope for more miracles from Robert Rodriguez.
If EL MARIACHI plays near you, I highly recommend you see it, even at full ticket price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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