The colors of the Mountain

It is drama film directed by Carlos César Arbelaez.

The film is a shocking history about three children who try to recover a soccer ball that had fallen into a minefield. At the same time, the film also tell us about the turbulent lives of the children’s fathers,  the atrocities of the murderers bands that surround them, the scared and solitary teachers that try to make the children's life happier. It talks about the Colombia’s violence, the violence that displaces: the guerrilla, the paramilitary and others illegal bands. It documents the Colombian’s horror, filmed in the lost mountains of Antioquia.

The way the film was done has the intention that the spectator feels really the shocking situation where the protagonists are in. it is very interesting the point of view the movie was done, it takes the children’s point of view. Without any dude, is the most innocence way of appreciate the world, from the point of view of a child In the development of the movie the children weren’t conscience of what was happening, of the situation they was facing and their only distractions were the school and soccer, when their soccer ball fell in a minefield the only they think is in how to get the ball out to play soccer.

It is a very realistic film, without tricks of edition. The realistic way the film express make us feel inside it, see how the situation of Colombia is, what a people have to live while others enjoy.

In the putting into scene, the director is focused on give us a look from the children perspective. The violence of the film is not explicit it is implicit, we can see there is not almost music in the film, but, when there is music it is very soulful like at the end when Manuel is leaving of his house with his mother and his little brother. The children's look of sadness fits well with the music, creating an amazing emotion on the spectator that is perfect to me.

A characteristic that I found very important to mention is  how the director uses symbolism to represent the implicit violence, every time there is a violence scene like it is from the point of view of a child, when they arrived for example on the part that Manuel gets into the house and sees that everything is destroy and his father is gone. The violence has past, and just the traces are found. However, there is a scene where they show blood, but at the time the children were not present.

It is very interesting how the director place with the coloring on the movie; in the beginning the first Image that the spectator see is Manuel’s house with the coloring and the light low, and all the sudden the scene bighted, the bright colors are used in almost all the course of the movie until the last scene; when they are running away for the violence, the image takes low and cold colors. The director wants to convey the sadness and desolation the children are living in, the same happened when the film stars.

The film reflects the Colombia’s displacement of population for violence reasons, it stills being a serious problem of human rights, with sociodemografic implications in the country, it affects particularly to women and children that are from rural zones of the national territory in a high percent. They are forced to run away the region where the power is confused with weapon, the complicity of the impunity and the civil population’s impotent. Adding fear to poverty, this Colombian people are looking for a remote place far away of the responsible of murderers,   disappearances, kidnappings, threats and terror.

The displaced by violence are growing and multiply around the country like if they were sentenced to silence and exile.

The film has a realism that doesn’t leave anyone indifferent. But, the suspense that generates in some scenes the movie, for example when Manuel, Poca Luz and Julian try to get back a soccer ball from a mined field, is a big experience.

When the spectator is really connected with the movie until he is feeling inside it and the film generates feelings in the spectator, it is the moment when we can say that there has done a very good job.