Bless Me, Ultima dir. by Carl Franklin (review)

Nuevo México is a special place. With its long history of cultural mestizaje, big skies stretched out across high desert mountains and llanos, and majestic orange-haze sunsets, New Mexico is a place full of magic and wonder. This is what native Nuevo Mexicano Rudolfo Anaya beautifully captured in his novel Bless Me, Ultima, originally published by Quinto Sol Press in 1972. The book has received many accolades throughout the years, was selected as part of the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read project, and has been a commercial success with over 360,000 copies sold. Seldom does a film adaptation match the eloquence of a literary masterpiece, but Carl Franklin’s 2012 independent film based on Anaya’s work is Academy Award material. The cinematography, screenwriting, acting, set-design, and musical score work harmoniously to transport the viewer to another time and place.

It is odd that it took 40 years for this film to come to fruition considering the commercial success the book had, both within popular culture and academia. Hollywood clearly had its doubts that this film would do well enough to take the financial risk to produce it. As such, it is noteworthy that Christy Walton, heiress to the Walton fortune, admired Anaya’s work so much that it inspired her to finance the film adaptation of Bless Me, Ultima. The film was released to a small regional Southwest market premiering at the historic Plaza Theater in El Paso, TX on September 17, 2012. In response to its strong reception and critical acclaim, the film was given a limited national release on February 22, 2013, in US cities with high Hispanic populations. However, despite its targeted market, this film could be successful on a much larger scale, much like the novel has been.

True to the spirit of the novel, the plot centers on Antonio Márez (Luke Ganalón) and his coming of age story, and Ultima (Miriam Colón), an elderly curandera who has come to spend the rest of her life with the Márez family on their small ranch in the northeastern New Mexico llano. It is there where Ultima reconnects with Antonio, the last Márez child she delivered as a mid-wife years earlier, and shares with him the knowledge of the llano through its natural wonders and medicinal plants.

Set during the World War II era, the novel and film deal with the conflict between the traditions of family, home, and working the land, and the onset of modernization and its effect on ancestral ways. Seven-year old Antonio has an inquisitive mind and seeks answers to some of life’s most profound questions, particularly why evil exists in the world. He also feels the pull between his two family traditions of Los Luna and Los Márez. On his mother’s side, the Luna tradition is farming, and they are hopeful that Antonio will bring much honor to the family name by one day becoming a priest or a man of learning. On his father’s side, it is the freedom of the open llano and its rough vaquero ways that call him to live a more adventurous life, like his father did. These questions and their polarizing nature trouble him, but it is Ultima who shows him that learning and knowledge come with time and patience.

The deepest conflict and main theme of the film is the time-tested struggle between good and evil, albeit with slight twists. The heroes in this case are an elderly Hispanic woman and a young Hispanic boy who don’t rely on physical power, but on knowledge and goodness. The plot thickens when Ultima must prove the strength of her healing powers to cure Antonio’s Tío Lucas, who is bedridden, dying from an unknown and seemingly incurable illness. His sickness was the result of a curse by the Trementina sisters as revenge for spying on them as they performed a witch’s brew one fateful night. Ultima confronts Tenorio Trementina, the father of the three sister witches...