... the inaccuracies weren't so crippling and blatant. There are movies where suspension of disbelief and glossing-over of inaccuracies is important. This is not one of those. You'd think that an author could have better researched basic historical facts in order to bring his point across.
This movie is based on a period novel. As such, the author of the book should have done his research. It appears that he didn't. I cannot believe that in 1927, when the book was published, information about Perú's famous people and places wasn't widely available in other parts of the world. This smacks of another "Celestine Prophecy", however less juvenile and for-the-gullible than that particular narrative was.
Perú has always been proud of its historical figures and places, and information about them has always been readily available, including correct spelling of names. "La Perichola" is fictional while "La Perricholi" is not. It does not surprise me that Hollywood would gloss over this and many other inaccuracies and still go ahead with this project (thrice, once in 1929, again in 1944 and now in 2004) disregarding the sensibilities of their audience, especially Peruvians.
If you don't speak Spanish, you might be forgiven if you think that I am splitting hairs with nuances of spelling, but Spanish is a very precise language and if you don't spell things correctly, they mean something else entirely, especially when they are "close" to the real thing. Being "close" doesn't cut it.
The real-life actress La Perricholi did have an affair with the Viceroy of Perú, Manuel Amat y Juniet, and she did bear him a son, but she never contracted a pox. Her name was not Camilla, but Micaela, and her son's name was Manuel Amat y Villegas, so he couldn't have been referred to as "Don Jaime", as he is in the story. Don Manuel, as he should have been referred to, did not die as a toddler falling off a bridge.
Cluxambuqua is not a town in Perú, and the name of the fictional town in the story could have been chosen as something more Castilian- or Quechua-sounding. Instead it is made to sound Portuguese, Catalán or even Basque, which was never done in Perú, where Castilian influence was so prevalent.
If you still think I am splitting hairs, read on.
The sole mention of a trek from Lima "to the Atlantic, following an old Inca trail" made me cringe, as it is an impossible trek. (Wait... did he say "the Atlantic"?? I actually repeated the phrase. And yes, he did say the Atlantic, not the Pacific.) A trek?? To the Atlantic?? Whatever for?? Callao, in the Pacific, is a fine port to sail from! The Incas never ventured deep into the jungle, so trails do not exist. Unless one is a die-hard explorer, no one in their right mind would attempt such a trip, let alone in the eighteenth century. You would have to cross the Andes, which would have taken weeks if not months back then, and then cross through hundreds of miles of dense, treacherous jungle before you got to a navigable river. That party certainly wasn't a party of explorers.
The Peruvians of the time (and even today) did not need to trek up to remote towns to do their pilgrimages. There were plenty of shrines in the city back in the late 18th century for famous local saints such as Santa Rosa or San Martín de Porres, so a trek to the Sierra wasn't needed. Granted, they may not have been sainted at the time, but Peruvians prayed to them anyway, since they knew they were on their way to sainthood. Such was (and still is) the local fervor.
All of these errors are too much for me to gloss over, and have negatively colored my opinion about the movie. Even if I managed to set aside all the poison from these errors, I found that the only crucial point about the movie was letter LVI, the Marquesa's "letter of courage" that she herself writes when she realizes her need to start over, to move on. OK. So is that all? Frankly, I didn't find anything else of value in the story. Please note that the performances of all the actors were OK, but only within the confines of a deeply flawed story. They could have at least tried to film the story in Lima. Instead it was entirely filmed in Spain. The whole thing rang false.
For all the era abuses of the Spanish Inquisition, I found it pointless to kick up an Inquisition trial over the conclusions of the biographer priest in his attempts to find a divine connection between the lives of the five victims. I never got a true sense of why the Inquisitor was so incensed about the conclusions. What were the details of the heresy charge? I heard the words and understood the argument, but I still wasn't convinced this merited an indictment by the Inquisition. I am sure somebody wanted a tortured narrator, so the priest was made into an Inquisition victim. To narrate abuses of arrogance by the aristocracy and the clergy in this particular manner was rather hard to swallow.
It also begs the question, why was the priest commissioned to do the study in the first place? None of the characters were so important as to merit such a project. Not even the Marquesa, since the point was made that she was not a solid member of the aristocracy. It's not like the Pope or the King of Spain were among the victims.
The attempt by the author (and the script writers) at connecting the lives of dissimilar characters as they culminate in a tragic moment was feeble and incoherent. For a much better treatment of human interconnections, and how they fare in a momentous event, I think that the movie "Crash (2004)" does a far, far better job.
This movie is based on a period novel. As such, the author of the book should have done his research. It appears that he didn't. I cannot believe that in 1927, when the book was published, information about Perú's famous people and places wasn't widely available in other parts of the world. This smacks of another "Celestine Prophecy", however less juvenile and for-the-gullible than that particular narrative was.
Perú has always been proud of its historical figures and places, and information about them has always been readily available, including correct spelling of names. "La Perichola" is fictional while "La Perricholi" is not. It does not surprise me that Hollywood would gloss over this and many other inaccuracies and still go ahead with this project (thrice, once in 1929, again in 1944 and now in 2004) disregarding the sensibilities of their audience, especially Peruvians.
If you don't speak Spanish, you might be forgiven if you think that I am splitting hairs with nuances of spelling, but Spanish is a very precise language and if you don't spell things correctly, they mean something else entirely, especially when they are "close" to the real thing. Being "close" doesn't cut it.
The real-life actress La Perricholi did have an affair with the Viceroy of Perú, Manuel Amat y Juniet, and she did bear him a son, but she never contracted a pox. Her name was not Camilla, but Micaela, and her son's name was Manuel Amat y Villegas, so he couldn't have been referred to as "Don Jaime", as he is in the story. Don Manuel, as he should have been referred to, did not die as a toddler falling off a bridge.
Cluxambuqua is not a town in Perú, and the name of the fictional town in the story could have been chosen as something more Castilian- or Quechua-sounding. Instead it is made to sound Portuguese, Catalán or even Basque, which was never done in Perú, where Castilian influence was so prevalent.
If you still think I am splitting hairs, read on.
The sole mention of a trek from Lima "to the Atlantic, following an old Inca trail" made me cringe, as it is an impossible trek. (Wait... did he say "the Atlantic"?? I actually repeated the phrase. And yes, he did say the Atlantic, not the Pacific.) A trek?? To the Atlantic?? Whatever for?? Callao, in the Pacific, is a fine port to sail from! The Incas never ventured deep into the jungle, so trails do not exist. Unless one is a die-hard explorer, no one in their right mind would attempt such a trip, let alone in the eighteenth century. You would have to cross the Andes, which would have taken weeks if not months back then, and then cross through hundreds of miles of dense, treacherous jungle before you got to a navigable river. That party certainly wasn't a party of explorers.
The Peruvians of the time (and even today) did not need to trek up to remote towns to do their pilgrimages. There were plenty of shrines in the city back in the late 18th century for famous local saints such as Santa Rosa or San Martín de Porres, so a trek to the Sierra wasn't needed. Granted, they may not have been sainted at the time, but Peruvians prayed to them anyway, since they knew they were on their way to sainthood. Such was (and still is) the local fervor.
All of these errors are too much for me to gloss over, and have negatively colored my opinion about the movie. Even if I managed to set aside all the poison from these errors, I found that the only crucial point about the movie was letter LVI, the Marquesa's "letter of courage" that she herself writes when she realizes her need to start over, to move on. OK. So is that all? Frankly, I didn't find anything else of value in the story. Please note that the performances of all the actors were OK, but only within the confines of a deeply flawed story. They could have at least tried to film the story in Lima. Instead it was entirely filmed in Spain. The whole thing rang false.
For all the era abuses of the Spanish Inquisition, I found it pointless to kick up an Inquisition trial over the conclusions of the biographer priest in his attempts to find a divine connection between the lives of the five victims. I never got a true sense of why the Inquisitor was so incensed about the conclusions. What were the details of the heresy charge? I heard the words and understood the argument, but I still wasn't convinced this merited an indictment by the Inquisition. I am sure somebody wanted a tortured narrator, so the priest was made into an Inquisition victim. To narrate abuses of arrogance by the aristocracy and the clergy in this particular manner was rather hard to swallow.
It also begs the question, why was the priest commissioned to do the study in the first place? None of the characters were so important as to merit such a project. Not even the Marquesa, since the point was made that she was not a solid member of the aristocracy. It's not like the Pope or the King of Spain were among the victims.
The attempt by the author (and the script writers) at connecting the lives of dissimilar characters as they culminate in a tragic moment was feeble and incoherent. For a much better treatment of human interconnections, and how they fare in a momentous event, I think that the movie "Crash (2004)" does a far, far better job.