One of the best scenes in Cry Macho involves sign language. It’s not even a scene, really; just a brief exchange of the short-but-sweet variety. I mention it because I wish more of the film were like that.

The two protagonists speak English, and yet there is a language barrier issue going on here. Specifically, the actor who plays Rafael, Eduardo Minett, makes you go for the 'mute' button almost every time he opens his mouth — the exception being when he falls back on his native Spanish.

It’s not the young man’s fault, and it happens to the best of them; just listen to Jean Gabin in Moontide, or Javier Bardem in Loving Pablo, or Salma Hayek, Sofia Vergara, and Penelope Cruz in any of their English-speaking roles.

Now, I understand he’s playing a Mexican boy who speaks English as a Second Language, and I’m also aware that his character is not meant to ingratiate himself with the audience immediately, of even fully — indeed, Rafael remains largely unchanged and unwiser until the end, but I’d like to think this is by design; the film as a whole may be viewed as a short section of a very long circle, and Mike (Clint Eastwood) and Rafael’s intriguing next-to-last conversation foreshadows the latter character’s narrative arc eventually going all the way around to where he is as sensible, though presumably also as old, as his current companion.

We find out only slightly more about where Mike is coming from than what we can guess at about where Rafael is headed, but the one’s past and the other’s future are heavily implied in both men’s present; the irony is that Rafael couldn’t skip the poor choices that await him any more than Mike — whose admonitions fall, Cassandra-like, on deaf ears; wisdom is earned, and non-transferable — can go back and avoid his own missteps. The movie’s events are thus, for lack of a better term, Rafael’s preschool of hard knocks.

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into it; perhaps this is just what my brain occupied itself with while I tuned Minnet and his execrable English accent out. Eastwood would have done well to make Rafael as ignorant of English as Mike is of Spanish (or, why not, have Rafael refuse to speak Mike’s language until the conclusion, to the latter’s surprise, after finally having gained a modicum of the former’s respect), so there could have been more non-verbal communication.

Cry Macho

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