Even the Rain: Antón

También la lluvia (Even the Rain), directed by Icíar Bollaín examines the Cochabamba Water War of 2000–fought over an attempt to privatize water–and its parallels to the colonization and Spanish exploitation of the indigenous population of the Americas. Even the Rain achieves this by focusing on a Mexican-Spanish film crew, shooting a movie about the arrival of Columbus in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and the actions of the famous historical figure, Bartolame De Las Casas. The Mexican-Spanish film crew arrives in Cochabamba and the wealth gap between them and the locals is super apparent.

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When I was watching the movie, I found my favorite character to be Antón simply because of his fairly interesting perspective of the other characters. In the world of Even the Rain Antón is a famous actor who is cast to be Christopher Columbus. Antón is a fairly blunt man, but he is also very withdrawn from the rest of the cast and crew. Early on in Even the Rain he points out the laxity of his fellow cast and crew, which I found pretty cool. Sadly, the more I dwelt on his speeches the more I realized how he wasn’t pure good, and in fact a pretty bad dude. But I thought that of all the characters, I found him to be the one most realistic, so, I decided to write a little about him.

Karra Elejalde, actor who plays Antón in Even the Rain.

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In Even the Rain, the character Antón, played by Karra Elejalde, embodies the apathetic acknowledgement of colonialism, both intended and not. Antón understands the evils of colonialism and uses his knowledge to disparage another member of the cast, Alberto, played by Carlos Santos. During a dinner at a very fancy restaurant, Antón verbally attacks Alberto and his character, Bartolomé de las Casas and the director, Sebastian. The character which Alberto is playing is known for his critique of the Spanish empire during their conquest in the Americas, De Las Casas for the most part is regarded as ahead of his time morally. Antón disses Alberto’s character, De Las Casas: “the director will cut it out, along with other important details, for example the fact that De Las Casas wanted black slaves from Africa to replace the Indians.” Antón points out that Sebastian is leaving out the negative opinions of De Las Casas to glorify him.  Antón points out the flaws of De Las Casas, despite De Las Casas’s critique of the Spanish exploitation of the indigenous people of the Americas, which shows Anton’s cynicism. His negativity towards this empiric ignores the message which Sebastian is trying to push through his movie, which is the unfair treatment of the indigenous people. 

From Antón’s argument here, it isn’t insane to extrapolate that Antón cares about the indigenous and the people around him, but his tone and next few lines in the argument completely remove that possibility:“Why not fill a plastic bag with the leftovers from this meal, which costs more than what they earn in a month, and give it to them, so their scrawny children can gobble it up like starving rodents.” Karra Elejalde speaks this line with such scorn for both his comrades and the workers in the restaurant to truly highlight the intent of his character. Antón recognizes the great socioeconomic gap in the Cochabamban society and uses his understanding of it to simultaneously take the high road and push down the Bolivians and the cast members. He insults the cast members by showing them their ignorance, willful or not, of the problems of the people who give them their hospitality. For reference, there are so few people in the high end restaurant they are at, that it is basically just the servers and the cast and crew. But Antón also insults the Cochabambans: he mocks their social class and compares their children to rats. Rats are a common pest which feed on the trash, to compare these Cochabamban children to rats signifies Antón's absolute disdainful opinion of these people. He sees them as literal bottom feeders. But he uses their unfortunate situation to gain superiority over his comrades. 

But Antón’s awareness is limited to others, shown later in the movie, in an interaction between Antón and Costa: “Why do you drink so much, Antón? Because I'm always [pause]Very, very thirsty.” Antón is constantly drinking alcohol throughout the film and in this scene specifically Costa talks to him and calls out this action. His consumption of alcohol resonates with his awareness and cynicism, as he simply does not see any good in the world and the use of alcohol, which provides separation between the body and the mind, is a metaphorical way to represent his shock and potential sliver of remorsefulness. But on a literal level, Antón is constantly consuming this alcohol for the reason of thirst, which displays the abundance of water/liquid in his life, as his reason isn’t one of survival, but one of comfort.His plight reflects the nature of the film(within the movie) and of his own character. The film depicts an empathetic view of the Native Americans, while the cast and crew turn a blind eye to the suffering of the people around them. For Antón his constant need of alcohol is a negative, which is why Costa brings up this bad habit. The sole pain which he shares with these people has its origins in overconsumption, creating an ironic juxtaposition. In comparison to the plights of the locals, he would be more inclined to understand, given his consumption.