like "spirit of the beehive", "cria cuervos" is a movie about pivotal events during childhood, stars Ana Torrent as the central character, and allows children to be complex and/or uncomfortably (though realistically) amoral. the later film also echoes the earlier in the way that it treats fascism and political turmoil as secondary to the more immediate experiences of family life, but makes sure to demonstrate a strong connection between the socio-political situation of the time and the behavior of the adult characters, which in turn seems to offer insight into the behavior of the children. one thing I could have done without was the flash-forward adult Ana appearing on screen in several highly contrived scenes (she is basically a speaking bust that seems to be answering the unasked question "what was your childhood like?") where she explains how she felt at age nine. this could have been included to introduce some instability into the narrative, call into question what we've seen. after all, if the movie is taken as the telling of memories by the adult Ana, we can assume that a good deal of it is confabulation, and that would somewhat explain scenes like the strange mash-ups of arguments between parents, where the girl Ana circles and observes in a way that tells us that the scene is not literal, not meant to be understood as "what happened", and that the camera is not acting as a witness, but as a "mind's eye". still, i feel that the subjectivity of the visuals- the fact that we are meant to see the movie as a look into Ana's mind- was clear without the adult version applying her overarching conclusions retroactively. it might have simply been the lines in these scenes that i didn't care for, or the fact that a woman staring into a camera as if she is being interviewed by a psychologist (who happens to be more interested in studying What People Say About Childhood than Childhood Itself) is not as visually stimulating as seeing what a little girl thinks. regardless, the movie as a whole is a successful (moving, articulate, beautiful) argument for the differentiation between inexperience and innocence. watch it, and relish "porque te vas".
