Dos monjes (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934)

Dos monjes (Two Monks), recently restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project, is a stunningly beautiful Mexican Gothic masterpiece that tells its story of a doomed love triangle twice, from the separate perspectives of its two protagonists/antagonists-turned-monks. Considered a pioneering film in Mexican horror, Dos monjes is more of a romantic melodrama (though its opening and closing scenes are pure horror), but the whole thing is Goth as hell.

Juan Bustillo Oro, directing his third film, really goes for it, and the film's blend of Expressionism, surrealism, foreboding atmosphere, comedy, romance, tragedy, terror, graceful camera movements and off-kilter angles, carefully composed shots, editing that experiments with both choppily quick cuts and smoother transitions to mirror the psychological states of the characters, and shadows and reflections places it comfortably alongside such kindred films from the silent and early sound eras as Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vigo's L'Atalante, and Cocteau's Blood of a Poet and Beauty and the Beast, with Oro adding Mexican melodrama and Catholic guilt and forgiveness to the already potent mixture.

Dos monjes begins and ends in a Catholic monastery. One of the monks, Javier (Carlos Villatoro), has, in the other monks' opinions, fallen under the sway of the devil. Javier has grown mad, lashing out at the others and falling into strange fits in between brief periods of quiet normalcy. Another cloister of monks has been disbanded, their members dispersed to other monasteries. One of these monks, Juan (Victor Urruchua), has joined Javier's monastery and is urged to see if he can get the devil out of Javier, in a sort of make-the-new-guy-do-it hazing ritual. They usher Juan in while Javier is relatively calm, but when Javier sees Juan, he goes berserk. Juan gets the hell out of there, but Javier follows. The two men briefly recognize each other, for reasons we don't yet know, and then Javier picks up a giant crucifix and bashes Juan in the head with it. The other monks don't care for this sacrilege. Not cool, Javier. (Cinematically speaking, though, very cool, Javier.)

At this point, the film moves from Gothic horror to Gothic romantic melodrama as the monastery's abbot talks to the crazed Javier in a moment of clarity, followed by a conversation with the injured Juan. We see both men's stories in flashback, first Javier's, then Juan's, as they each confess their version of the events that led to both men becoming monks and Javier attacking Juan. This story also involves Ana (Magda Haller), the woman both men love. Javier, pre-monk days, was an aspiring musician and songwriter, living with his loving mother Gertrudis (Emma Roldan). While Javier plays his piano next to his Expressionist-as-hell windows, the woman across the street, Ana, watches him through the curtains before she's chased away by the angry-as-hell elderly couple she's boarding with. After she rebuffs the crude advances of a rich cad brought to the house by the oldsters, she is booted onto the street. Javier and Gertrudis take her in, Javier falls even more in love with her, and the couple get engaged. Things are fine and dandy, except for Javier's consumption, which causes him the occasional spell of poor health, especially in winter. Then, Javier's best bro Juan, a world traveler, wealthy entrepreneur, and sophisticate, arrives back in town. (I won't spoil the hilarious dialogue from Juan describing his recent travels and acquisition of wealth.) Sparks quietly fly between Juan and Ana, mostly in glances and gestures, though Javier doesn't notice. (His mother sure does.)

There is much more to this story, which I won't spoil and which ends back at the monastery in a surrealist tour-de-force that is like Bunuel meets The Phantom of the Opera meets Satan's fall from heaven meets the conclusion of a telenovela storyline, but one subtle thing I loved was the slight difference in dialogue, facial expression, and placement of characters in the handful of scenes that occur in both men's stories. Memory is unreliable, and I loved the way Oro showed this without making a big deal out of it. The gist of what happened remains the same, but the men's memories are shaped by their own particular points of view and the fuzziness caused by the passage of time.

I can't recommend Dos monjes enough if you're a film lover. The restoration by the World Cinema Project is gorgeous, and the clarity of the images (compared to crappy VHS and YouTube ripped copies) allows the viewer to see Oro's amazing shot compositions in nearly all their glory. If you're looking for a straight-up Gothic horror, you're only going to find it here intermittently, but give it a chance anyway. The whole thing is compelling, visually exciting, and damned good-looking. Dos monjes is a great movie.