Who Is Luis Mandoki's Innocent Voices?

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Innocent Voices:
Innocent voices, directed by Luis Mandoki, depicts the horror of war and its impact on children caught in the middle of El Salvador’s civil strife in the 1980’s. The film, Innocent Voices portrays the story of struggle, love, and survival through the eyes of an eleven-year-old Salvadorian boy named, Chava. It speaks loudly of a time in El Salvador, where war and violence was well known, and where the village is situated between the Salvadorian army’s controlled capital and guerilla fighters. As most of the viewers captured, Mandoki’s film is so powerful and cultivating in describing the tragic elements, which grow progressively throughout the film, such as: the paradox seen within the film by showing the beauty and unification …show more content…

In this case, referring to the eleven- year-old-boy named Chava; Abandoned by his father at a young age, he confronts adult responsibilities and is now forced to be “the man of the house.” As the film is told through the eyes of a young boy, we see the horrific violence and struggles he faces, in order to hold on to his innocence and survival. “Childhood in El Salvador during these harsh times would end with a bullet or horrific recruitment of all twelve-year olds in the Salvadorian Army, something that Chava was trying to avoid” (Wiki 1). Innocent voices reflects the agony of the poor during the Civil War in El Salvador when twelve-year-old boys were required to become murderers. These scenes automatically change the perspective of the audience. We can feel and relate to the level of child experience that Chava and the other young boys lived through, and what it meant to actually try and survive the instability, and violence by your own government, and how it actually became normal within society. As seen within the film, “Chava struggles to maintain the condition of being normal and calm within his home, with the constant fear of turning twelve, the age that the government was able recruit him, meanwhile he cares for his younger brother and sister, trying to conserve their innocence and sheltering them from the chaos that surrounds them.” (Heuvel 2) The force of this …show more content…

Within the film Innocent Voices, the audience can see the use of humoristic lines, which portray mixed feelings throughout the film. It’s a way of connecting with the viewers at different levels of emotions by balancing out the brutal conflict with the paradoxical meaning of poverty. Underneath the complex and difficult issues seen during the Salvadorian Civil War, we can see how Mandoki uses paradoxical statements within the characters of the film to show the beauty and unification of poverty when they are not at war. The social environment in El Salvador during this time period was surrounded by economic inequality and poverty, but Chava and his family depict how the family unification outstands the economic instability they are living in. A scene within the film that represents the unification of poverty is when Chava and a few of his friends throw balloon lanterns into the sky, emotionally showing a moment of happiness and beauty to the viewers. Overall, These paradoxical statements and scenes within the film are what keep an interest to the

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