The book this movie is based on (same title, by Osvaldo Soriano) is one of my favorites ever. I've read it four or so times, and have taught it in college lit classes.
The movie is not bad, but it leaves out a lot of apparently minor details from the book that make it possible for the very astute reader to figure out what's really going on -- everyone's dead, and this is purgatory.
You do see the engineer receiving a letter from his daughter in the middle of nowhere, and being completely non-plussed about it -- a rather spooky occurrence if you think about it.
But most of these clues are missing... the fact that people simply can't cross the barbed wire that's on the sides of all the roads and fields, ever, though no one knows why... the fact that Bolivia is heaven, the promised land some people are trying to get to, but cars can't get there because people mysteriously can't put them in third gear, ever... the movie never develops the fact that the few locations the action takes place in are not on any map anywhere... and perhaps most importantly, the haunting fact that no matter where people take off to, they always end up back in the three or four places that make up this ghostly world... and for some reason, they simply don't care, if they even notice.
There are quite a few other things that support this conclusion, but I don't wan't to spoil the book completely.
And by the way, that bizarre talking-to-god scene at the end isn't in the book... maybe it was a 90 second attempt to make up for all the spooky stuff that was omitted.
The movie is not bad, but it leaves out a lot of apparently minor details from the book that make it possible for the very astute reader to figure out what's really going on -- everyone's dead, and this is purgatory.
You do see the engineer receiving a letter from his daughter in the middle of nowhere, and being completely non-plussed about it -- a rather spooky occurrence if you think about it.
But most of these clues are missing... the fact that people simply can't cross the barbed wire that's on the sides of all the roads and fields, ever, though no one knows why... the fact that Bolivia is heaven, the promised land some people are trying to get to, but cars can't get there because people mysteriously can't put them in third gear, ever... the movie never develops the fact that the few locations the action takes place in are not on any map anywhere... and perhaps most importantly, the haunting fact that no matter where people take off to, they always end up back in the three or four places that make up this ghostly world... and for some reason, they simply don't care, if they even notice.
There are quite a few other things that support this conclusion, but I don't wan't to spoil the book completely.
And by the way, that bizarre talking-to-god scene at the end isn't in the book... maybe it was a 90 second attempt to make up for all the spooky stuff that was omitted.