‘Encanto’, the candid look at Colombian reality, by Mauricio Bernal

Those who have said that “Charm” is a movie based on “One Hundred Years of Solitude” must not have read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” more than the Wikipedia summary. In the end, winks to the novel by García Márquez they are nothing more than that, winks, as there are to other artists and other arts in the film. Those who have simply said that it is a film based on Colombia will not be exposed if it occurs to them to bring up the subject on the following evening. But, What does it mean for a movie to be based on a country? It’s not something you hear often. Actually, lately you hear when there’s a Disney movie in between: ‘Encanto’ is based in Colombia just like ‘Coco’ was based in Mexico just like ‘Luca’ was based in Italy. The chronicles that have been written about it they speak of recreating an “environment”, or a “spirit”, or even “a way of being”. So someone could legitimately ask: What is Colombia through ‘Encanto’? And legitimately it could be answered.

Violence

It starts here not because it is the main feature of Colombians –although many believe it–, but because it appears at minute zero of the footage. It is then that we are told that the Madrigal family is the daughter of forced displacement, which makes them unequivocally Colombian: officially, nearly 8 million Colombians have had to leave their homes in the last decades. Later the film returns to the question and then there are images of a town on fire and a gang of thugs on horseback chasing the displaced. The thugs are armed with machetes, a detail that is to be applauded because it places the action at a specific moment: after all, the machete was the favorite weapon of the period known as La Violencia, that devastated the Colombian countryside between the 50s and 70s. Conservatives killed liberals and liberals killed conservatives. It was the time when that infamy known as the Colombian ‘tie’ became popular.

Parrots and almojábanas

The film is thorough and leaves nothing to chance. Or so it seems: it would be necessary to see it several times to affirm it categorically. A priori, his love for detail more than passes the food test. The Madrigals eat and eat Colombian style. Is that a pillow over there? It has to be: that round cake served with eggs for breakfast. And the eggs, are they parrot eggs? By force: red dots can only be tomato –and, as everyone knows, parakeets are prepared with onion and tomato–. Later on – later in the film – there is lunch, the scene of Isabela’s marriage proposal. Let’s see, is that really an ajiaco? It is: that cream made from various types of potatoes (there are potatoes) where potatoes float (it’s redundant), pieces of chicken and, depending on taste, capers and cream. Let’s ignore the fact that ajiaco is from Bogota and that the Madrigal house is not even remotely in Bogotá or the surroundings. Not, in any case, in the zone of influence of the ajiaco.

Of course, if you look closely, it could also be a sancocho.

Mirabel’s dress

Dress up Mirabel with the typical costume of the peasant women of Antioquia (without accent, with accent on the second syllable) could suggest that all Colombian peasant women are dressed in typical costumes: as if all Andalusian women went out into the street with their faralaes dress or as if all Catalans went out to dinner with a barretina. That said, in the textile section the film is also a compendium: from the guayabera that Félix Madrigal wears throughout the film (the black man who reminds us that the two Colombian coastlines are populated by blacks) to the spotless suit with a vest that he usually wears the father of the protagonist (transcription of the elegance attributed to the inhabitants of the capital, still known as cachacos or rolos). Dolores, the sister with the prodigious hearing, is given an appearance and, above all, is dressed like the women of the Caribbean, capable of walking for hours with a disproportionate fruit platter over the head. Nothing has been lost in the mountains, but there it is.

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The magic and the rest

It is not enough for the family to be magical to relate the film to the magical realism of García Márquez, as anyone will understand, but tribute is obviously paid to him: the profusion of yellow butterflies is no accident. And – as has already been said – he is not the only honored artist. At some point in the film, the chords of ‘In Barranquilla I stay’, of the late salsero Joe Arroyo, a kind of local legend, and we must not forget that the song in the film is by Carlos Vives, whose commercial facet should not make us forget that he is one of the great innovators of Colombian music. In short: in ‘Encanto’ there are hammocks because Colombians are a people who like hammocks, and there are grilled corn because one of the informal jobs par excellence is to put a grill on any corner and sell roasted corn. There are ruanas because in the towns of the Andes people wear ruanas, and Mirabel points with her mouth because Colombians are like that, lovers of verbal savings, and there is a matriarch in charge of the family because Colombia is a country of matriarchies, where there was always a mother who shouldered everything.