Historias Extraordinarias

Cinequest 2009

Historias Extraordinarias – the (4 hour 20 minute) Movie

I am not ashamed to say that I dozed off a couple times in the second half – I did better than I had expected, and another viewer told me she was out at one minute 30.

Having not seen the ENTIRE film, I have a hard time reviewing it. I did enjoy it, I didn’t feel like I had just lost 4.5 hours of my life, I wasn’t sorry to have scheduled it. Would I recommend it? I haven’t decided yet.

I absolutely LOVED that the narration was in such simple Spanish that I could almost entirely understand it without subtitles (I am SJSU certified as “fluent” in Spanish. This makes me laugh.). This of course made closing my eyes for a minute much easier. But that also made it easier to doze off. Ah well.

I LOVED the promise of the three stories: One character named X, one named Z, one named H. Each a solitary man on his own personal journey or quest. At different times one or the other is searching for gold, searching for a beautiful missing woman, one is hiding for months in his hotel room, another trying to get a job done… But I never saw any real ending or wrap up to any of the stories, and I don’t know if it happened when I was asleep or not at all!

I LOVED the short vignette about a very old lion named “Colonel”. I thought that particular story was told very very well.

I was really interested in everything that was happening, although it jumped around so much I kept having to go back through my head to remember which story this or that character was from. None of the stories tied in with each other. I really enjoyed what I saw when I was awake.

But then I fell asleep for more than a moment and woke up to a group of German speaking men, and a first person narrator. What happened??? I figured out who the narrator was, but didn’t understand the connection. This was almost at the end, and marked the moment when I knew I had lost the battle to see this movie.

Also LOVED: The closing song at the end of the movie. Sung in English with Spanish subtitles, I enjoyed the Spanish version even better. Even though I wasn’t sure about the endings of each historia extroardinaria, this final song kind of tied them together for me.

In short: I loved everything I saw. My only complaints are about some missing endings/explanations, but they may have happened when I was asleep.

So what do I decide?

I say, if you’ve read the description and still want to sit through 4 hours 20 minutes of one movie, then do it. I don’t think anyone left during intermission and didn’t return. Just drink more coffee than I did.

It does not appear to be available anywhere, except possibly in Argentina. However you can put it on hold on Netflix and hope it is released one day.