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Innocent Voices (El Salvador 2004, 130 min. dir: Luis Mandoki, cast: Carlos Padilla, Leonor Varela)

Boys hide in school bathrooms while soldiers search with automatic weapons. They cry for their mothers. Their crime: they are twelve years old. Chava watches. He is eleven. The war in El Salvador started in 1980 and went on for more than a decade. It didn’t take long to exhaust the supply of recruits. The army went into the schools each year, drafting twelve-year olds.

The most devastating war films are not about the battles but the people caught in the middle. Innocent Voices is one of the best, but the least known. It should be up there with Shenandoah and Drums Along the Mohawk. But nobody ever gave this film a popularity award. El Salvador is where cleaning women come from who tape pictures of their children to their employee lockers. Nobody cares. More Americans know about Rwanda than El Salvador.

Chava, lives in a small village with his mother, sister, brother. His grandmother lives down the road. His father left for the US years before. The villagers are caught between the lines of the government army, sponsored by the US; and the guerrillas, manned by local insurgents. Chava is about to turn 12, and is living the last days of his youth before the army will snatch him. The film catches him between the playfulness of childhood with his puppy-love girlfriend; and the death, misery and destruction he sees daily all around.

The incredible performances of Chava and his mother, and the interweaving of normal childhood innocence with killing and death make this movie indelible. At one point he escapes a massacre of his friends, the guerillas, and runs for his life: only to encounter one of his former schoolmates, in the uniform of the army, manning a machine gun. Before the hour of his twelfth birthday, Chava’s mother packs him off with smugglers bound for the USA where he can join his father.

How Luis Mandoki got these performances from child actors is a mystery. I found this whole film remarkable for the authenticity, subtlety and performance. Made in Mexico, it really should be called a Mexican film, but since the story is in El Salvador, it is fitting to call it an El Salvadorian film. Probably one of the few. Who named it Innocent Voices? That’s enough to guarantee no one will see it. Why not 12-Year-Old Soldiers?

Maybe it could have attracted more than the bleeding heart audience. Turtles Can Fly, the excellent story of Kurdish children in wartime (MovieWithMe.com) is at least a curious title. The story of Innocent Voices‘ financing, title, and production is probably more complex than the movie itself. How sad we can recite the horrors of the Congo and Rwanda but remain clueless about tragedies so near.

Title: Mirage
Year: 1965
Director: Edward Dmytryk (The Sniper)
Writer: Peter Stone, based on a story by Walter Ericson
Stars: Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau, Kevin McCarthy, Jack Weston

The Story: In the middle of a power outage, a Manhattan executive suddenly realizes that he’s not sure where he’s been for the last two years. When he discovers that there are people trying to kill him, he hires a P.I. to help him figure it out. He soon realizes that he is the lynchpin of a vast conspiracy centered on an aerospace giant.

Why It’s Great: There’s something so post-modern about amnesia movies. The hero doesn’t remember his past life and feels as if he was invented from whole cloth when the movie began, which is, of course, true. As his friends try to convince him otherwise, the hero remains dubious and it’s hard not to be on his side. We know he’s right. These movies, if done cleverly, force us to question our own readiness to accept narrative conventions, then re-build our acceptance as the hero finds a “better” explanation–but the disquiet remains. On another topic: the movie is way ahead of its time in terms of its blandly evil global-corporation villains, who use a utopian-sounding think tank as a front for their ever-expanding profit-seeking. They sound just like BP when their shill calmly explains, “I can’t respect any legality that would impede progress.”

For two more reasons, check out Cockeyed Caravan…