At one level, this film focuses on a much delayed coming of age adventure for Jane Fonda's character, Harriet Winslow, who suddenly decides she has had enough of her mother-dominated spinster school marm life. Yes, we would expect her to be maybe 10-20 years younger than her 50 years, and some have suggested she was thus miscast. However, her relatively advanced age makes her crush on Peck's 70 year old character, Ambrose Bierce, more believable. Peck's characterization of Bierce is somewhat at odds with what I have read of this man. We get the impression that, like Harriet, he has decided to forsake his bookish life, as a sick old man, for a final hands-on adventure, as an aid to the rebels in the Mexican revolution. However, the real Bierce fought in the Civil War and later crossed the continent on another assignment. He was not a one-dimensional bookish writer, by experience.
Fonda simultaneously develops a crush on both Bierce and General Arroyo(Jimmy Smits). They are both seen as romantic rebels, though of very different sorts and for different personal reasons. Harriet reminds Bierce of his daughter, whom he hasn't seen for many years, while Bierce reminds Harriet of her father, who abandoned his domineering wife for a new love, and who fought in the Spanish American war to help free Cuba. But after partially destroying the Miranda mansion where he was conceived, Arroyo delays taking his troops to join Villa's, as ordered. Arroyo's bedding of Harriet on the very bed where he was conceived symbolically reverses the power relationship in which his European father raped his native American mother. He finds the original Spanish land grant papers giving the land of this hacienda to the peasants. Since Spain no longer governed Mexico, these papers were not necessarily valid, as Pierce points out, but Arroyo refuses to heed. Arroyo's shooting of his favorite horse and of Bierce reinforces his determination to stay at the hacienda of his birth instead of joining Villa.
There are several references accusing Arroyo of having become the new Miranda, and thus betraying the revolution. I don't understand why Arroyo had one of his soldiers shot for doing what he himself was doing. He must have known he would receive the same sentence if he did not soon join Villa's forces. Perhaps this symbolized the near universal tendency of revolutionary leaders to gradually become tyrants as bad or worse than those they topple. So it had been with Porfirio Diaz, the once revolutionary general the revolutionists now fought against. So it would be with various successors to Diaz during these turbulent times.
This is an entertaining film, for the most part. There are enough action scenes to complement the philosophizing and other tamer scenes. You will have to pay close attention or see it several times to dig out all the symbolism. I can see why this film was important to Jane Fonda. It is, in a sense, autobiographical, symbolizing her mid-life transformation from an apolitical sex kitten into an anti-establishment political spokeswoman for the powerless of the world.
Fonda simultaneously develops a crush on both Bierce and General Arroyo(Jimmy Smits). They are both seen as romantic rebels, though of very different sorts and for different personal reasons. Harriet reminds Bierce of his daughter, whom he hasn't seen for many years, while Bierce reminds Harriet of her father, who abandoned his domineering wife for a new love, and who fought in the Spanish American war to help free Cuba. But after partially destroying the Miranda mansion where he was conceived, Arroyo delays taking his troops to join Villa's, as ordered. Arroyo's bedding of Harriet on the very bed where he was conceived symbolically reverses the power relationship in which his European father raped his native American mother. He finds the original Spanish land grant papers giving the land of this hacienda to the peasants. Since Spain no longer governed Mexico, these papers were not necessarily valid, as Pierce points out, but Arroyo refuses to heed. Arroyo's shooting of his favorite horse and of Bierce reinforces his determination to stay at the hacienda of his birth instead of joining Villa.
There are several references accusing Arroyo of having become the new Miranda, and thus betraying the revolution. I don't understand why Arroyo had one of his soldiers shot for doing what he himself was doing. He must have known he would receive the same sentence if he did not soon join Villa's forces. Perhaps this symbolized the near universal tendency of revolutionary leaders to gradually become tyrants as bad or worse than those they topple. So it had been with Porfirio Diaz, the once revolutionary general the revolutionists now fought against. So it would be with various successors to Diaz during these turbulent times.
This is an entertaining film, for the most part. There are enough action scenes to complement the philosophizing and other tamer scenes. You will have to pay close attention or see it several times to dig out all the symbolism. I can see why this film was important to Jane Fonda. It is, in a sense, autobiographical, symbolizing her mid-life transformation from an apolitical sex kitten into an anti-establishment political spokeswoman for the powerless of the world.