At its center is a dramatist's purest of wishes: to capture the interiority of people in dire circumstances, to make us see what they see and feel what they feel.
It can test the patience of a viewer. But the beauty of the images and the underlying power of the story, especially when Beatriz begins to emerge as the focus of the film, make Vazante an immersive watch.
The ending has a feeling of inevitability but is nonetheless shocking, a tragedy resulting from an original sin that haunts, and will continue to haunt.
Every frame of Inti Briones's starkly gorgeous black-and-white cinematography ... hints at an inherent contradiction, either visually, in the narrative or in its larger themes.
An epic of desperation, clotted emotions, racism and innocence destroyed, "Vazante" is chillingly beautiful and thoroughly awful, stuffed with grief and tragedy while wrestling with the dynamics of power.