(OUR LADY OF) GUADALUPE – The Film Review 

At a time when some 2 Million Muslims are in the middle of their Hadj, or religious pilgrimage that is required of them to make once in their lifetime, another pilgrimage is also being made on this side of the globe at a rate of 15 Million a year. This pilgrimage doesn’t make the U.S. headlines or get American coverage but the story behind the pilgrimage has been made into a film with a thinner but more believable story than The Da Vinci Code had draped on it. 

The story is one of a brother and sister, now grown and professional, living in Spain. The brother has married but is distant from his wife and children. The sister is very attractive but you get the feeling that she has not formed many close attachments to men in the past. Because this is a foreign language film not made in Hollywood and rooted in popular American culture, their characterizations play within the social structures you imagine exist in the given location’s culture. In America you would think the sister might be gay and the husband might have an affair going on but neither scenario materializes here as a reason. The story shows that there are buried, more complex reasons why the brother and sister, though outwardly successful and attractive, are relationship challenged. Their story unfolds as the brother, an archeologist visiting Mexico City with his sister to see a common friend, reads a book detailing the history of Our Lady Of Guadalupe while investigating the origins behind his recently deceased grandmother’s painting of the Mexican Iconoclast. This history is revealed by way of an ancient Mexican Indian scribe who is writing down the story as it happens, much like Mark recorded Jesus’ deeds on the spot as a scribe. 

The history that this human drama story is hung on is one of a ‘Miracle’ and illustrates something I point out to some of my non-religious and my Muslim friends alike. That is, it is not the Jim Bakers, Billy Grahams, or pulpit preachers that spread Christianity. It is the evidence of God ‘seeing you’ through or because of a ‘miracle.’ Trust me when I say that when you see a ‘miracle’, you know it as such, like when my dead cat was resurrected for my friends and enemies to see. The ‘miracle’ here was the appearance of the Virgin Mother, from the new Catholic Religion that Cortez, himself being spoke of in Indian tradition as a god, brought with him from Spain. The Blessed Mother appeared to a peasant and requested that a Church be built to honor her at this grotto where she appeared because She was the Mother of the Son of God. The mature villager went to the Bishop of the area with the request. Cutting to the chase here, when the Bishop demanded proof, the villager returned with an apron full of a variety of cut flowers he found on a barren mountain. When he unfolded his apron in front of the Bishop, the flowers had turned into the picture of the Blessed Mother you see adoring much of the religious artwork of Mexico. The pigments have now been scientifically studied and are unknown to exist anywhere on the planet. The stars in the picture line up to an actual constellation and the appearance of the ‘apparition’, as it is called, is said to have been predicted in the book of The Revelation. This ‘Miracle’ was documented by the Church in 1531AD and helped bring the Indians’ tradition of human sacrifices (as portrayed by Mel Gibson’s ultraviolet film, ‘Apocalypto)’ to a halt. This film was made and released to commemorate the 475^th Anniversary of the appearance of ‘The Virgin Mother’ and gave me Goosebumps when I watched the history part. Some of my So Cali readers may be surprised to learn that the name of the village peasant was Juan Diego, later to become Saint or San Diego. Over the centuries many more miracles have been credited to ‘Our Lady’ by the countless patrons who have made the pilgrimage to the grotto’s temple and handed over their heart in Faith. As far as ‘sightings’ of the Blessed Mother appearing go, She ‘appeared’ just this year to a Mexican woman who works up in L.A. at a candy shop and was on the verge of losing her Faith. Chocolate, which dripped down behind her furnace and should have puddled, instead formed a chocolate statuette of the Virgin Mother. If the Jews are God’s Chosen, then the Mexicans are a people Mother Mary holds close to Her bosom as one of Her children. (PLAYS [1] MORNINGS)