The Golden Dream (Spanish: La jaula de oro, literally
The Golden Cage) is a 2013 Mexican drama film directed
by Spanish director Diego Quemada-Díez. It was
screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013
Cannes Film Festival
where Quemada-Diez won the A Certain Talent award for
his directing work and the ensemble cast.
Storyline
Juan, Sara, and Samuel, three teenagers from the slums
of Guatemala, travel to the United States in search of a
better life. On their journey through Mexico, they meet
Chauk, an Indian from Chiapas who doesn''t speak Spanish.
Traveling together in freight trains and walking on
railroad tracks, they soon have to face a harsh reality.
User Reviews
Mind-blowing; heart-rending; yet life-affirming poetry
in motion!
25 October 2013 | by electric_sunrise (India)
At the recently concluded Mumbai Film Festival, I had
the pleasure of watching this brilliant & moving homage
to the treacherous journey thousands of Guatemalan
immigrants undertake from their home country into "The
Golden Cage", i.e. USA, in search of a better life.
Shot in a hand-held documentary-style, the movie gallops
at a steady pace without staggering or slowing down too
much. It finishes well below two hours, but the
complications of the journey and the character
experiences make it feel a lot longer than its running
time. Maybe its because it is a brilliant road movie
with so much happening. Watching these kids whose
journey and eventual struggles I soon became an intimate
part of, made me feel as though I was living this
adventure as it unfolds, traveling beside these children
on a train, with the afternoon sun mercilessly blazing
into my eyes, my face dried up by the dust in the wind,
hair-blowing wildly, as I peer at the ever-changing
countryside, with fellow-wayfarers. I felt that way
because of how intimately the camera lets us into their
lives.
Juan, Samuel, Sara (a girl pretending to be a boy for
the journey) and I, the viewer (as the intimate witness
behind the camera), begin a journey at Guatemala which
we will end in the US. Getting to the US is the only
consistent plan, the aim that binds us together; for the
rest of the story is like an account of a leaf on a
stream; randomly tossed and turned about by the currents
of life. We know we''ll get there; but we don''t know in
what condition: Here I lose a friend, there I make a
friend; here I dance in a loving crowd, there I am alone
in my misery; here I hunt for food, there I''m the object
of someone''s hunt; here I hitch a train ride, there I
run on golden fields. In this uncertain wilderness,
yesterday''s rival can be today''s friend, and characters
who disappear from our lives create a haunting presence.
In the end, the long journey takes its toll. This is a
road movie yet it is more. It is poetry.
There are great cerebral filmmakers who make you ponder
about the nature of Existence (Bergman, Tarkovsky etc);
then there are those who draw you into their story in a
way that you intimately experience the character''s
existence and share his world-view. With this impressive
debut, Diego Quemada-Diez shows streaks in that second,
rare breed; of being not necessarily a cerebral
filmmaker, but more of a poet or artist and filling the
canvas with strokes of ''feel'', and not ''reason''. Diego
spends much of the reel time cataloging what these
little insignificant lives do these little dots on the
map that flitter about the earth from here to there
going seemingly nowhere, affected by the random turns of
life; but through the length of the film, he lets us
know them personally, and that gives these unknown lives
and their unsung stories a soul. On knowing them, we
discover they have values of friendship, loyalty, love,
honor, sacrifice, without the knowledge or pride of
knowing these are noble values. By the end of the film,
I recognize what happens to these children might happen
to anyone were we not protected by the proud shackles of
civilization and education. Theirs, on the other hand,
is the raw, wild spirit, proud and dreamy, full of
self-belief; yet suffering from their oversimplified,
innocent view of the world.
Poetry in film is a tribute I once paid to Joon-ho Bong,
after watching his beautifully haunting "Memories of
Murder", where the ''feelings'' the movie impressed on me
stayed well after watching it. In "Memories of Murder",
I could ''smell the rain'' till few days after watching
the movie. After finishing this cross-continental
travelogue of "La Jaula de Oro" few days back, I still
feel dry in my throat and dry on my face: it is a thirst
unquenched. It is a promise unfulfilled. A dream
betrayed and denied, as a direct consequence of my
ignorance of the world I live in. I feel I have paid for
my foolishness; for the reckless pursuit of my desire
for a better life, for my over simplified view of the
world. Now, I''m more than thousand miles away from home.
My skin is full of scabs, my eyes still dirty from the
travel, my hands stained with grease from my new job in
the promised land, but my head is turned upward, and
when in the night, snowflakes fall over my eyes like
infinite stars from the sky, I''m cleansed. Like Juan, I
know my heart is always ablaze with an infinite Hope for
wonder, and that can never die.
