What a waste of my time!!!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I went into this film without realizing it was by Carlos R. I won't explain the storyline as you may have read it already by now - I will however try to rationalize why it may be loved/hated.This "artistic" film is not meant for the regular masses of people - that much is clear. It however goes a step ahead by trying to create a niche group amongst the "sophisticated" critics/viewers as well! It's a "short story" shot in exaggerated long moments of nothingness. You will be viewing the (deliberately) expressionless actors looking into space like zombies in addition to the Mexican landscape, roads, people, roads, sun rising, (did i mention roads?) etc with no coherence. It was during these long shots, I realized this film was reminiscent of another rather *boring* Mexican film I had once lost 2 hours of my life to.It wasn't until the much talked about "Real Life people" sex scene that I paused, checked and found it was indeed a film by Carlos Reygadas! At least he has succeeded in imprinting his style even on normal audiences! Once a director does it (ie Geriatrics Sex in Japon) in a movie, its considered artistic by the niche critics but to do something like that again in another gloom of a film? I call it a disturbing fetish crying out for media attention! Let me get this straight - the film is not about sex primarily - it also is *supposed* to be about human dilemmas of morality, class divides etc.However we never get to see it, comprehend it or actually feel for it. It's a film which will fulfill those niche audiences and allow them that seat of authority which they can have and enjoy.PS. This film will be enjoyable in 4x Fast forward.

I don't disagree that this movie has great flaws. I mean the dialog could be more fluid, the editing could be more crisp, so on so forth.But while the movie is choppy as a whole, some of the scenes are breathtakingly raw. Like the part where Marcos is driving Ana from the airport, you can see, even almost smell, the city's absurd contrast between its economic classes. When Marcos is just staring into oblivion, you know you're looking at a real person, whose sweat is his own sweat and the grease on his face is his own grease.There is something mysterious and incomprehensible about the faces of every single person living and struggling in the city. It is not just a face of frustration, anguish, or despair, that a typical actor might give off.It's a face that is unique to that person, one that you will never get to know probably, but when you take a glance of in the subway or the bus or the sidewalk, you know somehow you relate to them, somehow you know there's a story behind them.This movie is just a mere glance of one person. It's not quite a study of Marcos, because we never got to be let in that deeply into his past, his motives, his whatever. It's simply presenting his situations and actions as they are, not pushing any particular perspectives the way most films do, not giving us any 'insights,' 'revealing monologues' or any of that.letting us simply be the judge of him if we are judgmental, the observer if we are observant, the aloof bystander if we are one, and most likely we're a little bit of every one of those types when watching this film.And that's very commendable for a film to let the viewers ultimately be the camera and the editor of the film. Instead of telling us how to view things.

The director is a stupid nerd who wants to make art films so he can meet cool chick , there are so many good movies to watch please stay away from this garbage, the only good thing is the blow job scene but any porn film had a better one , this guy just show his racism against Indian Mexican people like all the Rich people from third world countries does the bad guy is Indian and the victim is white , stupid movie I want my money back. I m so sad to see film footage waist in a horrible movie like batalla en el cielo I don't understand how people can see what this movie is about , is racism, and is also very poor make. I just see anything good about this stupid movie.

For two thirds of this film I was spellbound and then it suddenly span away from me. Listening to the director speaking afterwards, I think I know what went wrong and I shall have to view again some time to find out. It is all very watchable but slightly confusing towards the end, which is a shame and may be my fault, that of the director or even of Mexico itself. Whilst I have never been to the country it did seem that part of the lifeblood of this movie was the tangled city of contradictions itself. Even though not perfect in my eyes there was enough to show that this is a director of keen and original talent who will produce much more. His liking to work with non actors is welcome and his treatment of actual graphic sex is stunning. Very affecting, bitter sweet movie.