‘Even the rain’ refers to a 2010 Spanish drama film. The film got directed by Iciar Bolllain. The film depicts a director and an executive producer who embark on a journey to shoot a film about Columbus’s conquest of the Americas, upon choosing the film location in Bolivia. In the film, the director and the executive producer get faced by a moral challenge when they face protests from the natives. Karl Marx was a political & economical theorist who lived in the 19th century. Marx gets commonly known for his strong views on capitalism and his support for communism. The views of G. W. Hegel turned out to be highly influential on Karl Marx. Marx highly admired Hegel’s position on absolute idealism, which viewed that history was moving towards a great idea. Marx postulated that eventually communism would take over after the fall of capitalism. The views of Karl Marx get commonly known as Marxist school of thought. This paper will aim at analysis and interpretation of the film ‘even the rain’ using theoretical concepts postulated by Karl Marx (Marx, 1845). This paper shall base its arguments and analysis by applying a few concepts from Karl Marx’s capital and commodity fetishism to understand the characters and themes that unfold in the film. The basis for this paper will be rooted from two of Marx’s works; the German ideology and the Jewish question.
As man adheres to a certain religion, he finds himself in conflict with his citizenship and other men belonging to his community (Karl, 1844). This conflict bears down to the secular division existent between the civic and political state. As individuals reside within a given nation, they get bound to come at crossroads with the political setting of their countries. Marx stipulates that these differences arise from the differences in philosophies between the two (Karl, 1844). In the film, ‘even the rain’, there are differences between the natives and their government. The differences arise from their stands on the issue of water privatization in the country. Marx stipulates that the differences that exist between a political man and a religious man are similar to those between a member of the capitalist class and the working class. This gets evidenced in the film when Castro undertakes the role of helping the natives in their protests. Castro was initially apprehensive into helping the natives and got motivated by prospects of exploiting the natives to reduce cost in production of the film.
The film even the rain depicts commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism is a Marxist philosophy, which critiques capitalism (Marx, 1845). Commodity fetishism exists whereby human relations get viewed as economic relationships. In the film, a Mexican filmmaker and his executive director head to Cochabamba, Bolivia to document the arrival of Columbus and his take on the new world during his first voyage. The producer takes advantage of low cost setting for the film location in Bolivia. The executive producer manages to save thousands of dollars by letting the underpaid locals engage in work designed for experienced engineers. Costa exploits the enthusiastic locals by underpaying them without their knowledge. According to Karl Marx, this is a significant downfall of capitalism. Capitalism gets to exploit labor. According to Marx, capitalism only thrives upon exploitation of the working class. This gets depicted in the film as the executive producer exploits the impoverished locals while he saves thousands of dollars. In his excerpt, Marx terms this as surplus profit (Marx, 1845). According to Marx this represents a weakness of capitalism as commodities get sold for much more than what they actually cost. This in turn presents commodity fetishism, where individuals value commodities more than the human social relations (Marx, 1845).
The second concept presented in the movie is that of classes. According to Marx, capitalism brings about the evolution of social classes (Marx, 1845). In the film, it is evident that the locals mostly belong to the poor working class in Bolivia. The development of private property leads to the transformation of the plebeian small peasantry into proletariat (Marx, 1845). Marx stipulates that as individuals get to acquire wealth and property, there is a likelihood that there are those who will offer their labor for wages. This creates classes, which are the capitalist and working class. According to Marx, the birth of classes in society eventually brings about conflicts (Marx, 1845). The classes will always conflict since the working population will always want their wages to get higher. The owners of means of production tend to want their cost of production low. This leads to divisions between the classes and results to struggles.
In the film, Daniel, who is a local cast openly protest against multinational companies that get to deprive his community water. Daniel is a local man who gets cast in the film as a chief who led the revolution against Columbus. While casting, the film’s director, Sebastian is unaware of Daniel’s involvement in protest against water privatization. The water privatization, which the natives are opposed to in the film, represents a concept forwarded by Marx which detail his support of communism. According to Marx, capitalism results to the development of private property, which holds power over the low people in society. Privatization, according to Marx, enslaves individuals and deprives them from sharing the benefits of goods with their owners (Marx, 1845). In the film, the arrival of Columbus results to mistreatment of the natives. Columbus exploits the Indians by making them collect gold dust and then enslaves them. This gets to be a form of privatization by Columbus, which Marx advocates against (Marx, 1845). In the film, protests ensue over the high water fees exalted by the private water companies on the poor natives. The protests by the locals bring the country to a standstill. The withdrawal of the private company brings an end to the protests. The protests begin just about when the filming of the movie by Costa and his crew starts.
The poor in Bolivia engage in hostilities with the government over privatization. This represents Marx theory where he states that social classes bring about conflicts (Marx, 1845). The conflict in the film depicts that between the peasants in Bolivia, the private owners and the Government. This represents a conflict between classes. Marx predicted that the presence of a gap between the rich and poor in society ultimately leads to a revolution (Marx, 1845). This gets shown by the protest that emanate from the water privatization in the film. The Bolivian peasants revolt against the government’s move bringing the country to a standstill. Marx further stated that the revolution against capitalism bring a rise to communism. From the film, protests got to cease when the private firms pulled out and the government reverted to distributing the water to the peasants.
Conclusion
‘Even the rain’ is a conscious film that depicts the arrival of Columbus to the new world and his imposition on his subjects. The film mainly presents themes on Spanish imperialism, but a deeper analysis reveals a few concepts that relate to those by Karl Marx. Marx, a German thinker, political and economical theorist, postulates on theories such as commodity fetishism, materialism and idealism (Marx, 1845). These concepts can get used to define a variety of underlying themes presented in the film ‘even the rain’ as discussed in the paper.
References
Marx, K. (1845). Idealism & Materialism. The German Ideology , 1-21.
Marx, K. (1844). On the Jewish Question. Braunschweig , 1-19.
