Wonderful character development!

It is a performances centric movie

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert on Chilean history, but I'd like to think I know a good film when I see one... and this fits the bill. Featuring a mostly none professional cast (including a lot of children) it deftly tells us of life in 1973 in Chile just before General Pinochet came to power. It concentrates mainly on a private boys school where some new pupils have just arrived... who happen to be poorer, and a different colour to the existing students there. Met with racism and hostility, one does however find a friend. Both are from completely different backgrounds, but they bond over their love of comic books and bike riding. Tragedy is on the horizon though. and things in this South American country will never be the same again...Amongst a backdrop of protests and political upheaval, it fortunately skips most of the boring stuff about who did what and when, and zooms in on the friendship between these two lads and their families. The rich kid is by far the unhappiest... his mother is a prostitute, and takes him with her while she services her one client. His dad is always away, and his sister is a promiscuous ditz. The immigrant on the other hand comes from an environment where everyone seems to get on and help each other out, and his parents are an permanent fixture in his life (though his toilet is absolutely disgusting). It just goes to show, "money can't buy you love" as four moptops once said...Reaching the whole gamut of emotions, this successfully involves you in the lives of its participants to a degree that by the end, you almost feel they're your good friends. We are constantly reminded that life is rarely fair, especially in a country like this four decades ago where democracy was apparently a dirty word. Little did they know though, that things were about to get even worse... Oh well, as sad as this all is, it make for a stimulating 110 minutes, and one I can wholehearted recommend. 7/10

Wood's film is a touching memoir that takes place right before the coup d'état and the start of Pinochet's dictatorship of Chile in 1973. The friendship between the two boys tells the story from a different perspective, one that is not explicitly political but incredibly real and thought provoking. The relationship between Gonzalo and Machuca, two young boys living on opposing sides of the coup, accurately portrays the complexity of a situation that is usually portrayed as black or white, right or wrong. The music and cinematography beautifully enhance the mood and message of the movie. The viewer feels that they are watching one of their own memories unfold in front of them because of the ability to relate with the characters. Machuca leaves the audience with a feeling that the world isn't fair, and that there must be something done about it. Like most Latin American films this movie is good, but in a hard and difficult way; dealing with harsh realities is never an easy task.

I stumbled upon this film whilst flipping through channels. I quickly set the language to the original Spanish, I was so engrossed.I lived in Chile during the sixties and seventies, as a child and a teenager. I was one of the 'privileged class', and some of the scene were uncomfortable for me. But that's okay - they were meant to be.From a visual standpoint, the film is impeccable. But more importantly, it subtly brought out the contradictions within Chilean society; one line, that of Francisco Reyes, who plays the otherwise minor role of the Gonzalo's father, Patricio Infante, summarises the attitude of the moneyed class perfectly: "Socialism is perfect for Chile...just not for us." This should be required viewing for any serious student of Latin American history. Without pretension or melodrama, it presents - in the microcosm of Father Whelan's school and the lives of his students - all that was wrong and all that could have been right, in Allende's Chile.

I wasn't born when my country Chile was taken by the armed forces (police,army, air force, etc)Sep 11 1973. That day, when the United States of America (with Tricky Dicky Nixon as president) together with the Chilean militars took over the country to get rid of the Chilean communist government. This was happening everywhere, Vietnam, Salvador, you name it. United states giving military aid to destroy communism around the world (comunism meaning civilians). That day changed everybody's life in Chile. It was like the second world war, Chileans where taken to concentration camps and tortured, and killed by the thousands, the man behind all this was general Pinochet and Mr Nixon, Pinochet is known to be the Chilean Hitler by half the country, and God by the other half, I've never understood that. Machuca shows all this, boths sides of the story, but not the politic side of the story but what children saw. Machuca tells the real life story of a bunch of school kids living in this hell, their experiences, and what they had to go through. this movie really touched me, not because I'm Chilean, but because the film showed me something I've always been searching...the truth about those events, not the politics behind it, but the suffering of millions of people, right or left, from Allende's side, or Pinochet's side. I don't really care about Pinochet, nor Allende, they both got it wrong. what I care about is that this doesn't happen again.30 something years later Chile recovered from all this and is now the greates economy in South America ...viva Chile mierda...