Raging Sun, Raging Sky

Raging Sun, Raging Sky
Directed by Julián Hernández
at NewFest, June 11
Runtime: 191 min.

THIS YEAR’S EDITION of NewFest offers its diverse LGBT selection in the aftermath of Gus Van Sant’s Milk—the gay-themed mainstream movie that has done nothing to change popular understanding of gay cinema.The proof? NewFest is presenting the U.S. premiere of Raging Sun,Raging Sky, the latest film by Julián Hernández on June 11. It should be the summer’s major film culture event.

Milk was about mainstream culture congratulating itself. NewFest’s Raging Sun, Raging Sky showing is about gay cinema’s ongoing struggle for acceptance.

The mass media’s recent promotion of Mexico’s “Three Amigos”—Cuarón, Iñárritu and Del Toro—left out Hernández, Mexico’s finest, yet critically neglected, auteur. Of all the contemporary Mexican directors to enter the international scene, Hernández shows the strongest connection to Mexico’s romantic pop tradition but is distinguished by his aesthetically profound use of formal experimentation and progressive exploration of gender issues and sensual/spiritual experience.

Hernández’s two features so far capture contemporary sexuality via youthful protagonists who struggle with personal identity while searching for their social places.The elegant, contemplative style—emphasizing location and time—readily recalls Antonioni. Hernández emphasizes a sophisticated awareness of his predecessors.While his debut, A Thousand Clouds of Peace, makes this debt apparent, the second feature, Broken Sky, showed links to Resnais and Godard through use of time shifts and color fields. Hernández’s technique brings extraordinary accomplishment to movies about gay issues. (He complements Tsai Ming-Liang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, yet remains distinct.)

Serious sexual epics are a rare genre. An earlier example, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s 1986 Betty Blue, returns to local screens at Cinema Village this week, and Beineix’s lavish style of visual sensation and sensual concentration is a forerunner of Hernández’s method. Beiniex and Hernández make a one-two punch of erotic candor and emotional extravagance.

Raging Sky, Raging Sun completes Hernández’s celestial trilogy, and it already won a major prize at the Berlin Film Festival for its mix of modern experience and mythological flights of the imagination. Hernández further develops his ideas on form, romanticism and spirituality. His images are beautiful and intriguing enough to win the popular audience he deserves.