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Tarfumes.com - The Crime of Padre Amaro
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List Price: $14.94
Our Price: $9.96
Your Save: $ 4.98 ( 33% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Starring: Gael GarcÃa Bernal, Ana Claudia Talancón, Sancho Gracia, Angélica Aragón, Luisa Huertas
Directed By: Carlos Carrera
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9781404925977
Format: Color
ISBN: 140492597X
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Release Date: 2003-09-02
Running Time: 119
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: 2002
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Editorial Reviews:
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This controversial film follows a handsome young priest, Padre Amaro (played by Gael Garcia Bernal from Y Tu Mamá También and Amores Perros), who arrives in a small town and finds himself surrounded by hypocrisy and corruption--and also finds himself tempted by a beautiful young woman who confesses that when she "touches herself," she thinks of Jesus. What makes El Crimen del Padre Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro) particularly effective is that Amaro is no innocent--he skillfully forces a newspaper publisher to retract a scandalous story about the Church and is willing to take extreme steps to preserve his career. Some of the movie's harsher digs at the Catholic Church have provoked accusations of prejudice; but though Padre Amaro portrays a world in which no one's hands are clean, it also finds redeeming qualities in every character. A complex, completely engrossing movie. --Bret Fetzer
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: amateurish
Comment: After being pleased with "Motorcycle Diaries", I thought I would check out more of Gael Garcia Bernal's work. This movie was a huge disappointment. It was so amateurish that the darker aspects seemed silly, and the ending that could have been poignantly tragic, seemed sordid and pointless. As a practing Catholic myself, I was curious to see what the Mexican Church found so scandalous about this movie. At the end of the movie, I was left thinking that philosophical differences with the Church should be explored, but sophmoric mudslinging might just deserve repression.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great movie
Comment: I saw the movie and although I realize things happens like this, I still could not accept it. Good movie, recommend to see.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sins Of The Flesh
Comment: Father Amaro (Gael Garcia Bernal) is a young priest sent to work in the small, rural town of Los Reyes, Mexico. Father Amaro is idealistic at first. But soon discovers that his senior priest, Father Benito, has an ongoing affair with a local woman named Sanjuanera and that he is also laundering drug money for some murderous narco-traffickers in order to raise funds to build a "First World quality" hospital.
Soon Father Amaro finds himself involved in his own forbidden love affair with a romantically obsessed young girl named Amelia (Ana Claudia Talacon). When Amelia becomes pregnant the selfish Father Amaro seeks to protect his own career by pressuring Amelia into having an abortion. But the illegal abortion is botched and Amelia ends up bleeding to death. Yet, despite all his horrific misdeeds, Father Amaro is wrongly credited as being a hero for trying to save Amelia while the blame for her pregnancy and abortion is falsely placed on her "heretic" ex-boyfriend.
This movie depicts a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, with the worst characters, most notably Father Amaro himself, making out fine. While those with good intentions tend to suffer. For instance, the idealistic Father Natalio is ex-communicated by the Church for his devotion to a village of poor peasants. So, yes, this movie does offer a critique on the corruption within the Catholic Church. But, more importantly, it is about the corruption of the soul, which each of us, as human beings, are susceptible to.
"The Crimes Of Father Amaro" was one of the first in what has turned out to be a long line of intelligent, artistic Mexican films made over the last 5 years. I also highly recommend "Amores Perros" and "Y Tu Mama Tambien". This is a great movie. Go watch it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: temptation
Comment: this is an important movie about the nature of temptation and the complications of living a double life.. It is also an interesting look into hypocracy.. All of the characters are involved in some dirty business.. and this leads to a tragic outcome that will leave us lost in thought at the end.. Very captivating..
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mexico's official entry for this year's Foreign Film Oscar nomination consideration...
Comment: For many priests, celibacy is a true vocation which liberates them... For others, it is a lifelong struggle... If celibacy was made voluntary, not only would many priests be happier, but the Church would be richer... Above all, it might decide the only way to restore the numbers of the priesthood, and that seems to me not a bad idea...
As I understand, a Catholic priest must clearly know that he belongs body and soul, with all that he is, to the church, to her task, to her mission, her work, and her destiny... He must be a public icon of strength, virility, honesty, and dedicated service...
But in 'The Crime of Father Amaro,' the top film in Mexican box-office history, Carlos Carrera shows that even a man with morals and scruples betrays the nature of his profession, mostly when he brazenly criticizes the priesthood, and questions the Catholic Church's representatives on a variety of charges like illicit love affair, corruption, drug dealing, and hypocrisy...
The story takes a liberal priest Father Amaro(Gael Garcia Bernal), protégé of a repulsive obese bishop (Ernesto Gomez Cruz), to the remote dusty village of Los Reyes to assist the older priest of the parish Father Benito (Sancho Gracia) in his daily work...
Amaro quickly realizes that virtually every fellow priest is involved in something immoral, and that his aging superior is receiving financial help from the region's drug lord for the construction of a new church-run hospital, and is secretly spending his cold nights with the proprietress of a local restaurant Augustina (Anjelica Aragón). He also discovers that Father Natalio (Damian Alcazar) is suspected of aiding the revolutionary factions in opposing the drug lords and mobsters...
Amaro's own weaknesses is put to the test when he finds himself led into temptation by Augustina 's extremely sensual teenager Amelia (Ana Claudia Talancón) a relationship that eventually goes way outside the bounds of his priestly oath... and, without any sign of inner turmoil, he embarks on a passionate affair with the devout catechism teacher...
Amalia - for whom loving a young priest serves as an extension of her deep piety - decides that the good-looking priest is the one for her and rejects her disappointed boyfriend, the aggressive reporter Ruben (Andres Montiel) who wrote an article alleging that the hospital is a front for laundering drug money...
The most over-the-top performance is provided by Luisa Huertas as the town frightening parishioner Dionisia who takes great delight in exposing heretics... This malicious lady (who, apparently, knows absolutely everything there is to know about anyone...) pretends to put coins in the collection plate but cleverly palms paper money back...
Gastón Melo plays the tender lay-assistant to the elder priest, who cares for his invalid-epileptic daughter, and carries many secrets but tells none..
"The Crime of Father Amaro" is polemical today as Martin Scorcese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ.'
The film focuses on blasphemous scenes as on a vicious priest who stops at nothing, even by continuing the lies and hypocrisy to protect his career... His value system is completely corrupted... Father Amaro's ability to stand behind his beliefs extents to nothing... His generosity and wealth of spirit becomes selfishness and bitterness... His ambitions to rise in the church hierarchy clouds his judgment...
Mexico is in the middle of a film renaissance which is wonderful if they come up with a new wave of irreverent movies thundering forward juicier targets than the church's vices... sex, abortion, abuse, witchcraft, betrayal, and political corruption...
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