Ixcanul

A while ago I saw Tanna (2015), a love story that takes place in Vanuatu and involves a volcano, and is acted entirely in the local languages, Nauvhal and Nafe. Well it turns out that 2015 was *the* year for movies featuring a volcano and acted in non-dominant languages, because that was the year that Ixcanul, a film set on the slopes of a volcano and acted almost entirely in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language, came out. A couple of nights ago, we saw it.

The trailer for it might lead you to believe it was a love story, and the Netflix blurb is accurate only for the first third or maybe half the film ("A Mayan girl working on a Guatemalan coffee plantation dreams of escaping an arranged marriage to make a new life in America")

Instead, it went in directions I didn't expect, with characters acting in ways I didn't expect (but was gratified by), developing, in particular, a really touching mother-daughter relationship, but there are all sorts of touches, small and large, that appealed (including, for example, some tenacious, and dangerous, but also sacred, snakes).



Has anyone else seen it? What did you think?

pine grove cows

These cows are here, winter and summer--under these pine trees. Up the hill from them right now is a huge pile of butternut squash which I think? they must be eating? I like them; they are shaggy.





BTW... there are two entries before this one that I think possibly didn't make it into people's feeds. I did some hijinks with postdating and initially making private entries and then changing them to public, and I think they may have fallen into a friends feed oubliette.