The Worst Film Ever

Excellent but underrated film

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Carlos Carrera made the controversial film, El crimen del Padre Amaro, to expose the corruption and hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico. He wants his target audience of Latin Americans to understand that priests are merely human. Carrera casts the handsome Gael Garcia Bernal as Padre Amaro. The people in the film, as well as the audience, are drawn by his looks and inadvertently view him as a good person. In the beginning, the director portrays Amaro as selfless through the shot of him giving money to the man on the bus. Carrera reveals that Amaro's life is about to change as he zooms in on the wheels driving over the rocky, muddy road. Shortly after arriving in Los Reyes, the corruption begins to infiltrate Amaro's character. Following in the bishop's unscrupulous footsteps, Amaro threatens the newspaper into printing the church's "story" and he gets the journalist fired for printing the truth about the church accepting laundered drug money. Amaro becomes desensitized through the sins he witnesses. He sees Padre Benito violating his celibacy with Sanjuanera and, ironically, he violates his own celibacy with her daughter Amelia. In an attempt to cover his own sins, he is responsible for destroying Amelia's life. The final scene is amazing. Carrera films Padre Amaro at the pulpit during Amelia's funeral service and then he slowly retracts the camera down the long aisle. The camera-work is smooth and pans the whole congregation from behind. The angle and technique renders a sense of continuous corruption of one lie after another.An interesting aspect that Carrera brought into this melodrama was a sense of authenticity through the use of non-actors as townspeople. Another "noteworthy" feature is that he uses very little music in this film. Instead, he uses sounds that are more organic, which enables the audience to sense God.

So El Crimen del padre Amaro was quite a downer. Did anything good ever happen in this movie? Lets retrace our steps. On the bus, they all get held at gun point and robbed. Padre Amaro meets Padre Benito Diaz and quickly finds out he's having an affair with the maid. Then we find out he's making deals with a drug dealer to build his church. Padre Natalio, who we think is one of the better guys in the film for opposing Benito and trying to lift up his people against the drug trafficking, then has one of his men stab to death the lowly photographer and then Natalino lies about sending the photos to the newspaper, which is threatened over advertising by Amaro if the rebuttal is not run on the first page. Amaro has an affair with the maid's daughter in front of crippled woman suffering from cerebral palsy, who is later forced out of her home with her father because he, a masterful sexton who beats women, is fired by the oh so innocent Amaro. The maid's daughter ex boyfriend Ruben (probably the best guy in the film) loses it and attacks Amaro calling him derogatory homosexual terms. Amaro declines to press charges (maybe the happiest moment in the film). The bishop, maybe the only good guy (besides the journalist of course) strips down nude and we have to watch him jump in the bath. Was it necessary? No. The humanity! When Amelia dies, Amaro blames it on Ruben, spreading rumors that it was his child. Abortion hemorrhages, scandalous priests, the corrupt lady singing and shoving communion down the woman's throat, this movie had it all. If there was maybe one decent moment it's when the old man cowboy hat and all, offers Amaro a smoke. Just to show people never forget the good in people. But really thematically, this has absolutely nothing to do with this film, try as you might. So while I found the film captivating, I'd have to give it a thumbs down because I really never gained anything from it. It took one direction and never stopped spiraling down.

It's amazing how folks can watch this film and still not grasp its meaning. Breaking a vow of celibacy for a priest is a sin, not a crime. The true crime of Padre Amaro is not that he fell into a sexual relationship with a forward young woman or that she was only 16 or any of that. His crime is revealed mostly in the very last scene of the film, though he commits it throughout the story.This is not a feel-good movie but an important one with a lot to say about the place of religion and those who practice it in today's world. Though there is no gratuitous sex or violence in the film the story is one of grotesque moral compromise and debauchery of the spirit. If Padre Amaro believes in his religious calling then he has surely embarked on the highway to Hell. Witness his journey - see this film.

I enjoyed this movie, not because it was gripping or exciting, but because of what it had to say.I'm not completely aware of everything to do with the Catholic Church, but the controversy in this movie is a necessary one.I've never seen a Gael Garcia movie before and I thought this was good. The most powerful part of the movie is what it leaves you with - the message at the end; the themes of confession, of sin, of mistakes, of being human.If you can't watch something that is quite slow and is not edge of the seat stuff, then forget it. Even the music isn't very memorable. But the movie stuck in my mind.