Brimstone & Glory (2017)
Ecstatic ritual, danger and the absolute beauty of fireworks.
Language:
SpanishRelease Date:
2 March 2017 (USA) See more »Filming Locations:
Tultepec, Estado de México, MexicoBox Office
Opening Weekend:
$2,125 (North America) (29 October 2017)
See more »
Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
1.85 : 1
Small towns live and die according to what seem like whims of fate.
But just as every great fortune has its origin in a great crime, every
small town that survives has a particular economic motor. Some are more
interesting than others. The Mexican town of Tulpatec survives through
pyrotechnics.
“Brimstone and Glory,” directed by Viktor Jakovleski and backed by some of the talents behind “Beasts of the Southern Wild,”
is a documentary about that town’s annual Pyrotechnics Festival, an
event that, it seems, is prepared for year-round by its residents. The
fireworks engineered in this place, north of Mexico City, aren’t Macy’s
Fourth of July high-tech displays, precision engineered and digitally
controlled. But they’re not crude either. One hallmark of the festival
is the evening devoted to large sculptures of bulls, each one packed
with explosives. The point of this display is to have the bull as a
launching site for various light-and-sound spectacles while never
burning or in any other way damaging the sculpture itself. It’s like
creating a candy-dispensing piñata that remains whole. There’s a lot of
ingenuity required.
And there’s a lot of danger involved. Injuries during these
festivals are common. Town elders tend to be cheerful fellows who are
missing an eye or a limp or several fingers. Young kids working on
fireworks projects are praised for having “gunpowder in the blood.” The
film doesn’t have to push hard on a thesis about how economy determines
culture. The town is an organic demonstration of it.
There are
religious roots to the festival. It’s dedicated to a Portuguese saint
who, according to legend, rescued the patients of a burning hospital
without suffering a single burn. The day-to-day life of the town is
lived in constant proximity to deadly materials—large signs reading
“Peligro” are everywhere. The scenes of the preparations of the
explosives are fascinating, particularly because everything is so
analog. Mortar and pestle are primary tools in mixing powders and dyes.
And
once the big day arrives, the nimble cameras operated by Jakovleski and
his team get some awesome visuals. This is a movie that repays being
seen on a big reflective screen, one on which the image is projected
rather than one from which the image emanates. Because the light that
comes off of the screen is strong and fierce. It’s exhilarating and
scary at the same time.
The mode of this short movie is
naturalistic. There are interviews of people in voiceover, but not a lot
of talking-head footage. The perspective is of an observer sauntering
through the town and then thrust into the middle of a fearsome but
exhilarating spectacle. “Brimstone and Glory” took three years to make. I
think the filmmakers needed that time to come up with a result that
seems so simple and straightforward, yet has such deep resonance.
FINAL RATING: 7/10 FOR THE GENRE AND 6/10 OVERALL. Nice fireworks collection, but I am not sure if that is worth to watch it in cinemas. Better do that at home.
Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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