El bulto

A modern or post-modern Rip Van Winkel story of as much relevance to the US or Europe as it is to Mexico and Latin America. A young protester of the sixties era is caught up in a demonstration and savagely beaten by government-sponsored thugs. Nursed by his loving wife and children, he awakens and must confront the both the changes and the continuities in the society that he has missed participating or viewing in the intervening period.

This is one of the best films on the impact of the rebellion of the sixties on contemporary society in any language or culture. While the literate US public has some knowledge of the protests in the United States, France, and possibly Czechoslavakia, it is not known generally that Mexico also had a great protest tradition and was rocked by a major student rebellion. In this film, directed and acted in by the creative and accomplished Mexican cinema and theater producer, Gabriel Retes, an activist who was badly beaten and in a quasi-coma for around two decades, awakens in the new world of the contemporary post-sixties and must come to terms with it. A Rip Van Winkel story for the postmodern era, fascinating and intriguing, highly recommended.