FilmCriticLalitRao Cinema and painting are different forms of art. While the former is a mode of telling stories, it can be said that the latter is a form of visually representing those stories. For an astute viewer, true cinematographic art is created when a film director is able to merge both these forms of art. It is with Castle of Purity/"El Castillo de la Pureza" that Mexican cinema auteur Arturo Ripstein has directed a film wherein one sees cinema being portrayed on a big screen as an art form. It can be said that through this film he has depicted that in some ways a director can also be a small scale painter. He has made great use of closed spaces and nature as each frame, each shot bears the mark of an accomplished painter. His film is about a strict yet hypocrite disciplinarian who would go to any length in order to enforce discipline. Sensible viewers would be able to relate to the film's theme as it is quite possible for people to find a cruel misanthrope in their midst. It is not a daily occurrence that one gets to see a film whose protagonist likens human beings to rats. Mexican actors Claudio Brook and Rita Macedo play important roles in this film. In 1995, on the occasion of 100 years of cinema, Variety International Film Guide asked its national correspondents to list their country's top 10 films. The name of Mexican film Castle of Purity "El Castillo de la Pureza" appeared in that important list. It has been universally hailed as the film which got its author Arturo Ripstein immense critical acclaim. Film critic Lalit Rao watched this film during 14th International Film Festival of Kerala 2009 at Trivandrum,India where a retrospective of Arturo Ripstein's films was organized.

Gilles Francois Weird and depressing paranoia fest. Maybe it was the late screening session or the overload of films I had seen that day (Cinema Novo Festival Bruges with focus on Buñuel and contemporaries this year), but this film made me glad I could get out of the theatre and just ride home in the rain.To me, this film's about a man who's totally fed up with his fellow human beings caused by paranoid schizophrenia. When he married his wife, the arrangement seemed to be that the only one who ever was to set a foot out of the house was the man. Not his wife, not his children (the eldest is 18 and hasn't been outside of the house once). The only living daylight the children (Utopía, Porvenir, Voluntad) see, is via the atrium in the centre of the old house. And the only thing that 'window on the world' seems to have to offer is, rain, rain, rain. Only few times do we get to see the sun shine, and most of the times it's in the scenes where the man goes out of the house. When he does, he mostly is about to sell the raticide his children manufacture. The rest of their time, they spend playing old games, with old toys. Or they get punished for something their father doesn't really like. Sometimes it seems he even locks them up for fun. What a father doesn't have to do, to keep his children away from that rotten world outside! This movie may be a good case study (I really saw some symptoms of the disease I mentioned above, like I can see in someone I know myself), but it was, however, annoying and boring at times. This film is a must see for anyone who likes a powerful film that has a lot to tell, but do acknowledge you're up for one hell of a depressing experience. I don't regret seeing it, but there are many films I like better.

DhariaLezin Though recently in the Mexican movies we see basically the same kind of things like crossed stories or extremely "realistic" ones, or both, there are some things in the old ones that the new ones are forgetting: beauty. This movie is based in a true story where a man that is afraid to contaminate his family with the evils of the world (and actually he is already "contaminated", and very), decides to lock them inside their house for years, avoiding them any kind of contact with the world, even throw the windows. Not happy just with this, he makes the kids work in the family business that is making poison to kill rats. The characters are confocal created, ambiguous and confused, such as anybody is, and themes like loneliness or sexual curiosity in the kids while they are growing up is very well managed. However, even it is a sad story, it is so well treated, that it is beautiful. This is a movie that I would certainly recommend, specially because Mexican movies has not good fame.