In a year filled with softball films, “Narco Cultura” comes as a punch to the jaw.
Former National Geographic photojournalist Shaul Schwarz’s first film follows musician Edgar Quintero as he tries to become closer to the culture he reveres. Schwarz’s documentary does not intend to inform, but rather boldly tells a much more compelling narrative with a minimalist perspective. We get to see Quintero as he goes to Mexico and plays drug lord, sheepishly firing guns into the air and visiting the gaudy, extravagant cemetery palaces that cartel lords are placed in when they die.
This film exhibits the degradation of the city of Juarez, Mexico. Schwarz’s documentary excels in showing the juxtaposition between unseemly nature of the extravagance of the cartel culture that glibly celebrates murder and the life of the people who live under the pall of being in the middle of a cross cultural border war.
Schwarz cuts between Quintero and his high life, eventually riding in the back of a pickup truck with the son of a high-powered cartel member where he serenades him with scenes of the grim officiousness that investigators have to clean up after the cartels.
Most strikingly, Schwarz’s documentary has a grim sense of humor. Quintero believes he has to go to Mexico and breath in the smoke of the Sinaloa cartel to write songs while all his contemporaries simply troll the internet for stories to find inspiration. Living the high life has dire costs, where the whooping and hollering of the Narco Corridos turns into killing without impunity. The documentary does not make a direct connection, but shows what is a byproduct of the drug war and the eventual folk rhapsodizing of cartel leaders into emblems of heroism.
One of the music executives in the film promises the Narco Corridos can be the next hip-hop in popularity. Conversely, the title card at the end of the film reminds viewers that Mexico has banned the music and the irony of it hits hard as with most of “Narco Cultura.”
Schwarz’s documentary is sharply dressed film, showcasing the fruitless efforts of investigators who live under the drug traffickers grip over Juarez and the Narcocorridos who write the glowing odes to their mayhem.
dkahn-kashi@theeagleonline.com
