10. Even the Rain
With one of the best well-made film-within-a-film, Even the Rain is an outstanding movie of the greatest quality and depth.
Even the Rain is a 2010 Spanish drama directed by Icíar Bollaín with a killer cast, that at first glance, seems to be about the difficulty to film in remote foreign lands like the jungle (Tropic Thunder style!), all while dealing with sensitive politico-social issues.
We follow a Mexican director, played by Gael García Bernal (who is also a filmmaker in the 2015 mixed-media project Zoom), his Spanish producer, his cast and crew, dealing with problems far beyond “simple production” setbacks while trying to shoot a period piece about Columbus arrival in Bolivia. The many underpaid indigenous extras they hired are fighting Big Corp. and the local government because they do not want to see their rainwater being privatized.
The film addresses various issues such as the fine line between political Art project and propaganda, privilege and (white/Western) guilt, and this almost taboo production system where extras sometimes work for free, or PAs work in extreme conditions for minimum wage while others are overpaid for nothing more than filling forms. This microcosm, sadly, also helps Even the Rain to mirror life and the exploitation of people since the dawn of “civilization.”
