MARY CYBULSKI Enlarge Image

Chris Cooper in Amigo

Like a proud craftsman in an age of assembly-line commodification, writer/director/editor John Sayles insists only on the most lovingly realized quality.
   
Sayles is the acclaimed auteur behind such titles as Passion Fish (1992), Lone Star (1996) and Men with Guns (1997), and is one of America’s most celebrated independent filmmakers. His latest, Amigo, is the kind of movie many film lovers likely hunger for today: a film that places tremendous, thoughtful and deliberate emphasis on story and all its trappings. The result is an enveloping, enormously satisfying fictional experience.
   
The movie is set in the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century, during the American-Philippine War — yet another imperial conflict conveniently long forgotten. In a small, self-sufficient village, de facto community leader Rafael (veteran Filipino actor Joel Torre) finds himself in a tight spot when American soldiers commandeer the place.
   
Amongst the rebels the soldiers are attempting to eliminate are some of Rafael’s own family. At the same time, any appearance of cooperation with the Americans makes Rafael appear like a collaborator. A  balancing act must be struck over time, as the Americans settle in to "protect" the village, and tension between occupiers and occupied grows.
   
The film’s physical location is one of the most vividly realized in recent film; Sayles captures an indelible sense of the local people’s way of life, visualized in details great and small. This village of this movie feels like a real, functioning place, not merely a set.
   
Indeed, the entire film feels novelistic, insofar as the setting, characters and action are so dense, we feel we can almost move around in the world of story as it’s unfolding. Taking a God’s-eye perspective, Sayles characteristically presents his drama from the point of view of a wide swath of characters — all specifically seen and represented, all bringing their own perspectives to bear.
   
The overarching context, of course, is the long and ongoing legacy of American hegemony. "Get these people out of the dirt, we’re supposed to be winning their hearts and minds!" bellows an officer (Chris Cooper). It doesn’t endear the Americans to the locals, however, when it’s declared the rebels are to be considered mere bandits under martial law. Nor when the soldiers try getting Rafael to talk through a technique uncomfortably reminiscent of waterboarding.
   
Sayles is doing more than just drawing parallels between past and present, however; in essence, he seemingly intends the film an allegory for all foreign occupation. It is as the title figure explained to the British in 1982’s Gandhi: there is perhaps no people that would not prefer their own bad government to that of a foreign power.
   
The situation’s absurdity certainly isn’t lost on the garrison’s commanding officer (Garret Dillahunt). "Before I volunteered for this mess, I built houses," he grumbles at one point, unsure of his mission’s usefulness. How marvelous to see characters reflecting actual human complexity. For that reason alone Amigo is a film to seek out.