“Americano”: A Backpacker Travel Movie Worth Seeing?
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.24.06 | 11:42 AM ET
Too few travel-themed movies capture the spirit of travel as we see it at World Hum. “Before Sunrise” did. So, too, did “The Motorcycle Diaries.” This new film in limited release, Americano, sounds like it has potential. It focuses on a recent college graduate played by Joshua Jackson who is contemplating his future as his trip to Europe winds down during Pamplona’s San Fermin festival. Interestingly, actors in the movie were filmed as they participated in the actual Running of the Bulls. In a three-paragraph review in today’s Los Angeles Times, critic Kevin Crust praises the film: “Writer-director Kevin Noland effectively utilizes his fine young cast and the natural beauty and rich culture of northern Spain in amiably posing timeless questions of youth.”
The film’s Web site includes a statement from Noland:
What inspired the story? That enchanting feeling of waking up in a foreign country at dawn and looking out the window and realizing you are totally surrounded by adventure. I wanted to capture the beauty of truly experiencing other cultures. I wanted to show why it’s important to step outside our system and look at it from a different perspective. Life is a mysterious entity held together through a web of diversity. How boring the world would be if there was one terrain, one language, one way of doing things. Divided we stand.
I knew in order to provoke people to travel I would have to put the audience inside a mysterious world most have never experienced. Therefore, the choice was made to take an enormous, albeit calculated risk. In the process of bringing this story to the screen, the cast and crew literally risked their lives. They actually ran with the bulls to bring a level of reality to the picture that would allow the audience to experience the “awakening” of Chris McKinley. Joshua Jackson even slapped a charging bull as it was captured on camera. Furthermore, we enlisted a professional Spanish bullfighter to allow us to film him during an actual bullfight at the San Fermin festival. Shooting real time inside a packed arena had not been done until AMERICANO, which allowed me to provoke important discussions of cultural relativism.
Noland concludes, “The power of travel has become a movement of enlightenment. I hope AMERICANO inspires further exploration of one’s self through the world of other cultures.”
“Americano” opens today in Los Angeles and April 14 in New York.
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Saskia Oskam 04.04.06 | 9:33 AM ET
I think it is unbelievable that these actors participated in the bull runs in Pamplona. This is a really cruel event: the bulls are forced to run to the arena (they break their bones and their muscles get damaged, while being kicked and hit by the human participants) and that same night, they are killed in a bullfight. Why do film makers still promote this bloody event? I really don’t understand! I know a lot of people won’t be seeing this movie, because of the animal suffering involved.
Marieke 04.04.06 | 9:46 AM ET
Bullfighting and fiestas with animals are cruel and unnecessary! How could you have filmed the bullfight, while looking in the eyes of these beautiful, innocent, dying animals? You are sick!
Jeff Tang 06.22.06 | 1:15 AM ET
As someone who just returned from 8 months in Spain, I hoped this film might invoke some of those ephemeral emotions I experienced as a traveller on the flip-side of a culture, the frustration, confusion, and victories of living abroad. However, my memory must be foggy, because I don’t remember the Spain of my experience peopled with such horribly cardboard cutout “characters”, Spanish women taking off their tops at the mere sight of water, or anyone resembling Dennis Hopper(actually, that’s not true).
I do wish the people I met in Spain constantly spouted allegorical life-affecting drivel under the influence of absinthe and seduced me after making me wash their feet in their enormous villas. Unfortunately, Leonor Varela’s character has probably done more to hurt the image of the Spanish woman than anything since Penelope Cruz opening her mouth to speak in any English-speaking film.
Even more sadly, Director/Writer/Culture Pirate Noland seems to believe all espaņolas are gorgeous, flirtatious, come from incredibly wealthy families whose parents aren’t home, and exist purely to help us Norteamericanos ‘find ourselves’ in their mythically indefatigable style while waxing metaphoric about bullfights and serving us endless glasses of rioja. Viva el estereotipo. Well done.
film indir 02.19.08 | 3:56 PM ET
thnak your ;)
bedava oyunlar 05.22.08 | 12:12 PM ET
looks like good film ı will try to watch
firma rehberi 06.08.08 | 1:04 PM ET
thanks.. good