The backstory of Sansón and Me (aired on PBS-TV's "Independent Lens") is that filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes had also been a Spanish-English translator in the American legal system. A case that particularly troubled him was the life sentence dispassionately meted out to 19-year-old Mexican migrant Sansón Noe Andrade, for being part of a fatal gang shooting.
Reyes claims he was denied the ability to film Andrade for extensive interviews. To examine a life thrown away so heedlessly by society, the documentarian—"documentary" is a very fluid term applied here—uses members of Sansón's family and village in staged scenes, plus Q&A's, to reconstruct the young man's upbringing.
Sansón—played by a stolid young volunteer from the community named Gerard—turns out to be one of life's no-hopers. His father, a philandering, alcoholic fisherman, was apparently kind to the boy but died young. The heartbroken mother soon followed and left Sansón with an abusive grandmother. Seeing no future in Mexico, Sansón ultimately paid criminals to smuggle him into the United States, to California, where he married young and appeared to have a job (if nothing he found very fulfilling).
The homicide, Sansón claimed, was actually the fault of a gangbanger brother-in-law; Sansón himself had never been in trouble, and his refusal of a plea deal sealed his fate. Even the filmmaker seems a bit skeptical of his passive protagonists' protestations of innocence. Viewers hoping for exposure of a miscarriage of justice—or even some juicy true-crime frissons—will be disappointed that the filmmaker hardly explores the killing itself.
Rather, the film, with its admittedly heightened curio value of the stiff, non-pro re-enactors (a few of whom in the Andrade clan, we hear, are also on the downward path of drugs and violence), seems to be the cinematic equivalent of a book like Child of the Dark: The Autobiography of Carolina Maria de Jesus, giving voice to one individual out of the too-often faceless and nameless hordes dwelling in subsistence/poverty south of the mythic border with the United States. They are only humans hoping for a better life and almost certainly never to have one.
It remains a question mark at the end whether Sansón played a guiltier role in his downward spiral. Or if the making of this feature will really do him much good. But most viewers will agree that Reyes' experiment in empathy was a better alternative than just looking away.
What public library shelves would this title be on?
Pan-Hispanic collections and Mexican-oriented shelves are ideal territories (although in an interesting on-camera dialogue, filmmaker Reyes declared he met opposition over the film from those who think the entire project is negative for the Latinx community). The true-crime angle could also be considered.
What academic subjects would this film be suitable for?
The subject matter touches on the justice system, incarceration, current events, social work, Mexican/Latinx culture, and even the nature of cinema itself (the relationship of the documentarian with his subject, in this case). The bilingual nature of the narrative even poses a possibility in Spanish-language classes (not to mention that professional translation is a key element in the storyline).
What type of classroom would this documentary resource be suitable for?
Violence (and some sex) is stylized and non-graphic, and swearing is kept low-key. There are drug and infidelity references. Older high schoolers and college crowds have certainly seen worse.