The Days of Water

Based round the true case of a woman who became a saint and 'miracle' worker in 1936 Cuba, The Days of Water, with its restless camerawork, offers broad and sweeping intimations of the popular revolution to come: the exploited and pent-up energies of an oppressed peasantry will eventually transform themselves into revolutionary forces (symbolised towards the end by the firing of the first shot of defiance). Appropriately, the atmosphere is near hysteria, culminating with the wish fulfilment of the final carnage. Huge crowds harangued by a commercial conman wait to be blessed or healed; the Church rails impotently while a fantasy sequence reveals that its Virgin Mary has a malevolent face; decadent and opportunist politicians exploit the 'saint's' popularity with typically gangsterish methods. Voodoo and Catholicism combine to produce what can only be described as primitive baroque - an array of startling images, often as crude as they are effective.