Maria Candelaria - Women as the Root of All Evil
Thoughts On: Maria Candelaria (1943)
Made by Emilio Fernández, this is the Mexican film of the series.
A poignant classic, Maria Candelaria holds strong as one of the most powerful films to emerge from the 1940s. It tells a biblical, simple story circulating the imago of a mother. In such, it deals with the daughter of a prostitute - murdered by local people - who is prosecuted by those same villagers as she struggles to marry and make a living. In constant counterpoint to this background drama is the worship of the Virgin Mother, Mary, and a thematic focus (which this film is renowned and criticised for) on the native people of Mexico. The product of this narrative is then a meditation on the saying featured in the film: women are the root of all evil.
The presence, religious and existential, of mothers throughout Maria Candelaria gives some indication as to why this sentiment of women's proximity to evil is so persistent. Its main character is shunned and socially debilitated for the fact that her mother was a prostitute, and in such we see that she is burdened with the sins of she who birthed her. Her mother passed Maria, we assume, her beauty. And this is the only real 'sin' she inherits, for Maria is displayed with no fault beyond her beauty; it leaves her vulnerable to yearnings of possession (men and women alike, we see, desire her beauty) and it bestows her the power to possess many with jealousy. Such is where all evil emerges from in this narrative; the yearning for possession and the mania of the possessed. It plays out then like many 'witch hunt' stories, seeing the mere image of our main character attract and evoke drama. With Maria as an image to be possessed, and an image that possesses, her archetypal power is realised as bound to her femineity. And through this we can begin to understand that the idea that women are the root of all evil has less to do with an individual, and more to do with her power. Her archetypal power corrupts others around her who are weak, calling the evil out of them. This is the movement of the narrative: a beautiful women is the catalyst for the emergence of evil.
Maria is like Eve or Pandora who, by their own personal nature, release evil unto humanity. There is no darkness or foolishness associated with the nature of Maria, however. Her innocence and bond with her home is perhaps her only fault. So though her place in this story is to catalyse the emergence of evil, the reflection of this tragedy is one that reveals the weakness of a society beyond the individual. And here is where the thematic focus on native Mexicans becomes more interesting. Maria represents, as noted by characters of the film, the beauty of a real and presentient Mexico before colonisation. This juxtaposition emphasises the corruption of societies, who must construct a world on top of nature, as to tame and survive in it. And perhaps this indicates much about Fernández's social commentary after one considers that this film is set just before the Mexican Revolution; the political commentary one defaming corruption and glorifying a revolutionary innocence, free from oppression.
Of most complexity in Maria Candelaria is the image of a mother underlying all the so far discussed thematic exploration. The Virgin Mary is a repeated image of goodness contrasting the tale of evil and persecution that, in one of the late scenes, we see defined thematically. Maria, exasperated with her lover in jail, shouts at a statue of the Virgin Mary, asking her why she is such a cold and unloving mother. The priest calms Maria, having her see that the Virgin cries above her. And in this instant, Maria relinquishes her pain and anguish, settling herself as a child of sorts, trusting that the Virgin Mother is watching over her. This trusting of ones soul to the Mother is repeated throughout the film as a symbolic action of good. And such is in contrast to the discussed actions of evil: which are driven by wanting to possess, or being possessed manically. Maria appears, as does her husband, to be in constant possession of an image of goodness, commanded in silence by it. They are, one could say, good children of God where many others are not. And such provides the final reflection of the film that we will deal with. While women (archetypally, femineity) are presented as the root of all evil, so too are they shown to be the root of all good. Of dramatic interest is not the image of the feminine, but the child's vision of their mother: whether they are a good child or not. The mother possess life, and passes it to her children; it is the child that makes a world from it, choosing to be possessed by the good or the evil in nature, the archetypal mother of us all. Maria Candelaria reveals that this naked and true image of a mother is more likely to corrupt than enlighten a child, therefore a society. And such is the poignant tragedy; the image of a naked mother evokes evil, just as it may good. We are asked ourselves, could we be good child if we knew our mother naked?
