Blame

Maria Candelaria, [film], Directed by Emilio Fernandez, 1943

The film is about a beautiful, young Indian woman, named Maria Candelaria, who is rejected by her own people for being the daughter of a prostitute.  She and her fiancé are constantly facing struggles in the movie as a result of being rejected. At one particular point she is very sick and her fiancé desperately breaks into a store and steals medicine for her.  Once she is better, they proceed to get married, but are stopped by the store’s owner who has her fiancé arrested for stealing.  Periodically throughout the story, a painter thinks she is the most beautiful woman and desires to paint her.  Maria finally agrees to model for his painting if he agrees to pay for the release of her fiancé.  The artist starts to paint her, but when she is asked to remove her clothing, she refuses.  The artist continues to paint the picture with someone else’s body.  When the people see the picture, they assume that it is Maria Candelaria and stone her to death. It ends with the painter finishing narrating the story to a young journalist as to the response why he has never displayed this painting before.

            In class, we discussed several perspectives as to who is to blame for her death.  The painter? The townspeople? The prostitute?  This reminded me of another story taught in my husband’s class. It is a story about a prince who marries a princess, but because of business is away a lot.  The princess becomes lonely and is enticed to run away with a boyfriend, who quickly leaves her.  The princess tries to return home and asks several people to help her but no one will.  She then proceeds to return through the enchanted forest where a dragon has been ordered by a witch to eat any trespassers.  As a result, the dragon eats the princess.  So who’s to blame for the death of the princess?

As the class discussed this question, it became apparent that a lot of speculation as to who’s to blame was based upon the experience of each of the class members.  As a result, it was determined that it doesn’t matter who’s to blame but more on how it affects us as the reader based upon our experience.  I think that Maria Candelaria is similar in this regards.  It doesn’t matter who’s to blame but more on how it affects us as the viewer based upon our experiences.