también la lluvia

Director

  • Icíar Bollaín (Spain)

Main Cast

  • Sebastián –> Gael García Bernal
  • Costa –> Luis Tosar
  • Daniel –> Juan Carlos Aduviri
  • Antón –> Karra Elejalde
  • Alberto –> Carlos Santos
  • Belén –> Milena Soliz
  • Teresa –> Leónidas Chiri

Paper instructions

This film is a lot more meta than the other two. It is set in Cochabamba, Bolivia in the year 2000, as a film crew led by Gael García Bernal’s character shoots a film about Christopher Columbus. Daniel, the central indigenous actor for the film, is also a leader in the Chochabamba Water War over government attempts to privatize the municipal water systems of the country. The film contrasts the current struggles in Bolivia with the historical struggles of indigenous people portrayed in the Columbus film. So, you get to play around with these temporalities, with the notion that Andean indigenous people can simply stand in for Taínos, and with the attitudes of the crew.

Your assignment is to write a critical review of Even the Rain that evaluates the historical merits of the film. In order to do this, you will need to draw on the assigned readings from class. You must use two readings assigned from class. (No outside readings, though. Let’s keep it focused on the resources we’ve used in class.) Each paper should include a short overview of the plot, the important characters, and a discussion of the historical themes that they embody. Then, with reference to the readings, evaluate the historic merits of the film. Analyze the readings in the context of the film, and the film in the context of the readings.

It is up to you which historical themes you decide to emphasize from the theme, but you must be able to connect them to specifics in either the primary or secondary readings at your disposal.

Please note that this paper is to be entirely your own work. You may not use internet resources or other outside readings. Stick to the readings that have been assigned in class. Whenever you use ideas from those readings, whether explicitly or not, you must cite them in footnotes. Citations should conform to Turabian style. A guide to Turabian style citations is available here. We will be keeping up with reviews of the film available online. The one exception to outside-class resources available for writing this paper is the film’s page on the Internet Movie Database, which you may only use to keep track of and correctly spell the names of the characters.