The Mexican Cinema of Darkness by Doyle Greene

Author:Doyle Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2012-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

The Last Day

A shot of the sun just above the horizon is underscored by the subtitle “Guyana, November 18, 1978.... The Last Day.” The journalists return to Johnsontown; now armed with the note as material evidence of community dissent, their investigation becomes much more determined. Two reporters are refused entry to the locked barracks, the “Jane Pittman Place”—another allusion to plantations and slavery—and are threatened at gunpoint by a guard. Gable and Cole convince the guard to let the reporters investigate, and even Johnson’s lawyers are shocked by the rows of emaciated people crowded into bunks—the shots again modeled on photos of Nazi concentration camps. In his final interview with Johnson, Harvey confronts him with the note, producing another rant by Johnson against a conspiracy of enemies attempting to orchestrate his downfall. Encouraged, several church members now “speak up” and announce their wishes to leave with O’Brien, which emboldens O’Brien to offer all church members the chance to leave with him. Johnson, growing more disturbed (in both senses of the word), unleashes another diatribe at the traitors and liars who have infiltrated Johnsontown. As arguments between the congregation members erupt, O’Brien realizes that the situation is quickly escalating out of control, and he hastily gathers his entourage and the defectors. However, a thin, bushy-haired man joining them is explicitly pointed out to O’Brien: “He’s not really leaving. He’s one of them.” (Unnamed in Guyana, this was long-time People’s Temple member Larry Layton.)

The scene shifts to the airfield, where O’Brien and the others frantically start boarding charter planes. A group of unidentified soldiers gravitate around a small tent next to the runway (not surprisingly, their mysterious presence is never explicitly addressed in Guyana). 37 A tractor towing a tarp-covered trailer also slowly approaches. Amid the confusion, Layton boards one of the planes, draws a pistol, and begins to indiscriminately fire before quickly being disarmed. Layton’s initial attack is quickly followed by a group of men rising from the trailer armed with rifles, firing indiscriminately into the crowds gathered around the planes.38 As the gunmen determinedly walk towards the runway with rifles blasting, the solders inexplicably retreat from the airstrip. Shown in long shots as they withdraw from the scene, they are rendered as ineffective figures, retreating not only from the gunman but from one of the individuals on the runway desperately seeking help. A dark parody of the classic Western or action-film shootout sequence ensues; it also constructs more explicit comparison in Guyana between the camera and the gun: the reporters begin shooting the attackers with their cameras, while the gunmen shoot the journalists with high-powered rifles. One montage depicts a reporter with a camera frantically shooting photos, cutting to a gunman deliberately aiming his rifle, and cuts back to the reporter being leveled by a bullet. Another reporter with a video camera is similarly mowed down as he attempts to film (or shoot) the scene as well. As others attempt to escape, montages are constructed between gunman seemingly pointing their

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.