The fact that Cartel
Land was nominated for a Best Feature Documentary Oscar is both concerning
and makes complete sense. Normally that
combination would signal a problem with the Academy’s selection process, and
while that is what could be going on here, that’s not the entire picture. Cartel
Land is at times an incredibly proficient piece of documentarian
storytelling, but at other times it feels amateur and directionless, wandering
away from its central thesis into a point that it never fully develops, if that
point even existed in the first place.
The running theme of the film is of vigilantism in the face
of the Mexican drug cartels, primarily as seen through the eyes of the
Autodefensas, a group founded in the Mexican state of Michoacán by Dr. Josė
Mirales. The film does a great job of
portraying the Autodefensas in both positive and negative lights, whether it be
in the impact they have on the cartels’ grip on local communities or on the
way the soldiers among their ranks are flawed people who might not be the most
deserving or trustworthy when given a gun and free reign to hunt bad guys. The character study of Mirales himself is
particularly interesting, as he supposedly sacrifices closeness with his family
in order to fight for the cause and yet uses his power to seduce younger women.
But the main reason I think this film was Oscar nominated
was because it obviously was very dangerous to shoot, and documentarian Matthew
Heineman often chooses to face that danger head on. There are multiple firefights caught on film
that Heineman is directly involved in, with frantic Autodefensa members telling
him to get down and out of the way. The
devotion to the craft is admirable, as is the willingness to look at the bloody
aftermath of the firefights and the devastation of the families whose loved
ones were caught in the crossfire. That
said, the film strangely decides to censor itself during certain moments, like
a scene in an Autodefensa “prison camp” where people can clearly be heard being
tortured in the background, but the camera instead chooses to focus on a more
benign interrogation. It isn’t that I’m
eager to watch someone be tortured, and perhaps the openness of the
Autodefensas to be captured on film only extends so far, but it felt odd at the
very least given the lack of restraint earlier in the film.
The film’s biggest problem, though, is its insistence on
cutting back to an American vigilante group, the Arizona Border Recon (ABR). This is an extremist group that hunts down
people trying to cross the border from Mexico into Arizona, but the film never
presents any evidence to suggest that their actions are having any impact on
cartel trade. Heineman isn’t shy about
showing how the members of this group are generally motivated by racism and
misplaced economic frustrations rather than the drug trade, so it’s more than a
little baffling why he decides to spend so much time on them. If he is seeking to make a contrasting
statement about the ABR against a more morally reasonable Autodefensa, the film
is not edited in such a way to suggest it; likewise, if he was trying to
compare the two, the comparison feels completely disingenuous based on their
different mission statements. It feels
like Heineman shot his footage with the ABR and then didn’t know how to make it
thematically fit with the rest of his film, yet decided to include it anyway.
Cartel Land still
has plenty to offer as a look into the Autodefensas, even if it shies away from
the odd moment of brutality. It was
clearly a work of intense labor and dedication, and I think that is what the
Academy was trying to honor with its nomination. But I honestly can’t wrap my mind around why its
second vigilantic focus is even here, and that keeps the hard work from
entirely paying off.
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