Transcendent Images and Semina Verbi in Carlos Reygadas’ Films

Abstract

This article is an analytical and interpretive reading of the Mexican film director Carlos Reygadas’ work in light of “semina Verbi” (seeds of the Word). In his films, Reygadas explores the alienation and confusion that man, who has rejected traditional values and faith in God, experiences in the modern world. At the same time and like his characters, Reygadas seeks transcendence and the possibility of spiritual rebirth. His films are not strictly religious, but they do contain faint echoes the Gospel or semina Verbi, meaning “seeds of the Word” that are present in non-Christian cultures and secular works of art. As John Paul II said, the Spirit sows seeds of the Word in different rites and cultures that open them up to the fullness of meaning in Jesus Christ. Viewers can find semina Verbi in different elements of Reygadas’ films, including: the characters’ motivations, aspirations, and actions; the symbolic structure of the film’s space and time; and in the specific narrative style that invites viewers to meditate and contemplate. This Mexican director’s films echo man’s hidden longing for the spiritual world and for union with the sacred, with nature that surrounds him (which is “divinized” in many films), with himself, and with his spirituality that has been lost.An essential element of Reygadas’ work is the pursuit of transcendence understood in a specific way. The director does not seek metaphysical order in his works. Instead, he uncovers the biological and bodily dimensions of the world and recalls the eternal cycle of death and rebirth in nature. This is why transcendence often has a sexual dimension in Reygadas’ films; his characters experience a renewed physical interaction by which they transcend themselves. This type of experience leads the characters from passivity, stagnation, and death to the vitality and life. Reygadas’ characters’ search for metaphysical and spiritual transcendence and their experience of bodily transcendence are motivated and characterized by something similar: the desire to transcend their own limitations and barriers—an experience of contact with the One Who surpasses man, or that which man surpasses. The presence of images of transcendence and hidden semina Verbi are important determinants of Reygadas’ creative works. The cinematic reality that he creates is a distant sign of a higher order established by something other than man, and, yet, it is an order over which man has an overwhelming influence.