Films from Past Years
/ AmigoNarrative Feature | USA | 2011 | 128 min | Website
Director: Jonathan Sayles
The film is set in what seems to be a remote time and place – a hamlet in the Philippines, around 1900 during the largely neglected Philippine American War. Very quickly, though, Sayles makes connections and analogies with more recent wars and current American interventions. Using a fast-moving, almost old-fashioned narrative, he steps from gravity to humor, without falling into the trap of stereotyping any of his characters. According to Sayles, “This war represents a major switch in America’s psychology. In freeing Cuba from Spanish rule, we saw ourselves as champions of liberty. But in the Philippines war, in which one million Filipinos died, we wanted to be players, like the British, like the French, and carve up the rest of world. We made a stab at imperialism, and I don’t think we liked what we saw in the mirror.”
