Based on the experiences of director Armando Robles Godoy as he established his homestead in the Peruvian jungle, The Green Wall is "a bitter and beautiful movie," in which "Godoy translates his experience into film poetry rather than flat reportage and uses the physical environment (exquisitely photographed by his cameraman brother, Mario) as a great natural mystery, idyllic but cruel, rich but unyielding to the will of a handsome young settler (Mexican star Julio Aleman, in a vibrant performance) who is determined to survive there with his family." The idyll is broken both by the bureaucracy in far-off Lima, and at the film's end: "The blow comes from the rain forest near their house, where father and son have constructed a mock city of clay as a symbol of the civilized stupidity they sought to escape. The film's final sequence, an almost wordless funeral, is masterful movie making, a haunting glimpse of humanity that lingers in the mind" (Pauline Kael, The New Yorker). "A masterpiece!" (Roger Ebert).
Review of The Green Wall
