Sunday, October 19, 2014

Paradise Lost


Photographed By Ellinor Forje 

Claudia Traisac plays the character Maria, in the motion picture "Escobar: Paradise Lost" (2014). Whenever I hear the name Maria, I think of "West Side Story" (whenever I think of "West Side Story, I equally think of Carlos Santana), beautiful tango, salsa and flamenco inspired outfits or understated drama for lack of a better phrase, come to mind. That's exactly how Traisac dresses with ease. And with the fangirling done, I will now proceed.

Written and directed by thespian turned director, Andrea Di Stefano, "Escobar: Paradise Lost" (2014) tells the fictional tale of; "Boy meets girl, then meets her beloved beer-loving uncle, Pablo Escobar."

It turns out however that el cariño Pablito is no Pollyanna. Instead he's a pied-piping Pol Poterian Pusher. The rest, as they say, is a tragedy. A modern day version of the greatest romance ever told; The Garden of Eden where Benico Del Toro fittingly plays the serpent (please note that I'm not calling Del Toro a reptile per se. I'm merely alluding to the fact that he also voices the Snake in the forthcoming animated adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince"). 

Di Stefano, who is not a documentarist as he puts it, decides to focus on Escobar and his racketeering ways from a voyeuristic perspective. Thus, the narrative arc of Nick, played by Josh Hutcherson, is the gate through which we effectively enter the Medellín Cartel of Colombia.

Given the notion that "Escobar: Paradise Lost" borrows part of its title from the epic poem by John Milton, it's titillating to discern the aesthetic prose Josh, Benicio and Andrea use to lay forward their respective points of view in relation to the film and facts: Hutcherson said, "Nick had this kind of naïveté about him." Del Toro said, "He (Escobar) seduced a whole country." And Di Stefano said, "The story about a man who thinks he found his own paradise." 

These guys. 

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