In the film version of Bless Me, Ultima, Franklin seems to be most heavily influenced by the culture aspect of the book. This is achieved through a native-cultured sounding soundtrack and recurring shots of nature, which are often used as transitions between certain scenes. Franklin captures the innocence and curiosity of Antonio effectively by using many subjective shots throughout the film, which show Antonio's reaction to almost anything happening. This ranges from Lupito's death to simply his reaction of people in the town's market. In nearly every subjective shot, Antonio has the same facial expression that looks as if he is questioning everything he is seeing, and doesn't know what to make of it. However, in return, this leaves Antonio with one main emotion throughout the film (curiosity), which makes his character a tad stale, because his emotions are very rarely clearly explained. This also makes Antonio seem like he's not the main character, as he rarely talks and just listens and follows whoever he is with, unless he is with his friends. The prominence of Religion is captured well by Franklin by keeping Maria's authentic character in the film where she corrects bad behavior and often speaks of God and the Virgin Mary, and by using a strict priest who gives physical punishment and stresses the threat of Hell. Franklin also struggled with transitioning through time smoothly. It was hard to tell how much time was passing between each scene and the movie as a whole, due to the sudden cuts between night and day, and sometimes lack of context clues. In the book, the reader was able to detect that Antonio was slowly starting to think for himself and grow as a person. The film is ineffective at displaying this growth due to showing how Antonio is pondering a situation but not clearly showing how he feels. This remains true throughout the whole film, which leaves the most important character of the story stale and un-dynamic surrounded by characters of less importance that are clearly dynamic.

Bless Me, Ultima is based off of coming of age novel by Rudolfo Anaya. The novel contains numerous symbols and themes that examine topics ranging from identity discoveries to the question of after-life. These themes may be thoroughly examined in a novel but not in a 106 minute movie. I am not criticizing the movie because it's not faithful to the book (I actually did not enjoyed the book), but because the film does not seem to stand on its own without background of the book. This leads to many problems throughout the film. Many of scenes and events such as Ultima's black magic and Antonio's brother departing are left empty. We do see Franklin's use of Antonio's point of view shots and reaction shot of Antonio, which may mean that Franklin is trying to emphasize Antonio's internal growth, but as a film, the images need to speak more meanings than a frozen face of Antonio. The audience is left with Antonio's bad acting. I don't mean to be harsh but the actor of Antonio, Luke Ganalon, acted more forcefully and not naturally throughout the film. Antonio almost appeared to be lacking emotions. There's no sense of melodrama that could move the audience, but just a plain acting that appear to be reciting a script. So adding the bad acting and empty still shots of Antonio's reaction, the audience don't get the growth and changes of Antonio, but a feel of just a spectator watching a "set-up" scene.Another problem with the movie is cramming. Throughout the film, I never felt the building up but merely a skimming of themes. Just to name a few, there are Antonio struggling in dominantly white school, confusion over Catholicism and Ultima's magic, and Antonio's identity, but the movie seem to be really good at focusing on tensions between Tenorio and Ultima. For the rest of the themes, the movie just introduces them without analyzing them. For example, what is the point of introducing characters such as Florence and the "gang" at church? They merely seem to have done nothing to move the story further. We don't get any backgrounds or any explanations of the gang but just scenes of them teasing Antonio. For Florence, he seems to be just a "throw-in" to the film. The first time we were introduced to Florence, he was just a kid who was also teased and seemed self-conscious, but then the second time, we see Florence suddenly standing firmly to his belief that he has no sins. Really! Wow! Maybe this is to show another "witnessing" by Antonio, but the movie's cramming makes characters like Florence not credible.In total, all of these introductions may have been intended to show Antonio's struggle, but so what? If I have not read the book, I wouldn't even thought that Antonio's self-struggle was that important theme because I would be distracted by another scenes of Tenorio threatening Ultima. This brings me up to another problem. The transitions. I'm not sure if I ever felt a smooth roller-coaster tension, but instead felt just a bumpy ride. There are happy scenes. Many of them. For example, we see Antonio skipping second grade because his teacher believes Antonio is intelligent and then boom, we are introduced to a dark scene of Ultima in danger. It's like jumping into an icy pool after a fine spa. Many of the scenes consisted of happy scenes with music blasting in high pitches that you may think maybe Antonio is happy or what not and then it's in some intense moment with some speedy music tempo, you're just like, oh- no, what's wrong now after a happy moment?. This leaves the scenes to never build up, but keeps on crashing until an awkward ending.However, most of these problems are the result of mediocre screenplay. I don't blame the director (but ironically, the scriptwriter is also the director!). The director does a great job attempting to visually paint the film. The theme of nature is very evident. Many of the long shots with voice over of Antonio sounds and appears poetic. Even for scenes with story, the nature seem to smoothly converge with the story. The scene where Antonio and his family gather for harvest is beautiful. The lights are brightly lit enough to illustrate the happy moments occurring while not lit enough to over expose the audience with "eye-hurting" sunlight. Moreover, the scene includes slightly lowered angle shots that converge the subjects (family) with the ground-like nature.Moreover, the director does a great job alleviating the choppy screenplay. For example, Narciso's death was extremely abrupt. After Narciso is left drunk and alone, we get a close up shot of Antonio, revealing Antonio's reflection. Then next second, we see Antonio running to his house at rainy afternoon, and then suddenly, BAM, Narciso is shot by Tenorio. The pace itself is extremely abrupt and unnatural, and I blame the screenplay, but the director makes the scene flow smoothly. He achieves this by first slowly zooming into Antonio and then uses a soundtrack of chilling whistle that seems like Antonio is suddenly alert and realizing something. Next, when Antonio turns around and discovers Tenorio about to shoot Narciso, we see them in a long distant shot that illustrates the scene in Antonio's point of view. In total, this makes the unexpected gun shot not a result of bad screenplay but as a part of spontaneous life: Antonio is about to witness another tragedy that he was never ready for. In summary, Bless Me, Ultima is a beautifully shot movie that is more like a visual cliff note of the book. I would enjoy the movie if there is a strong focus or some kind of theme that keeps occurring throughout the movie, but instead, I am left with some "trial tastes" of diverse and emotional themes about Antonio's coming of age.

After reading the novel by Rudolfo Anaya, I watched the movie and the first thing i noticed was Franklin's use of added music on the soundtrack. He uses a lot of natural sounds like crickets, birds, and flowing water along with an erie tribal music that seems to be constantly building up to something. Franklin commonly showed the landscapes of the New Mexico filming location by using extreme long shots and tracking shots with the sounds to really make the nature come alive as it does in the story with Ultima. Collectively all the diegetic sounds, nondiegetic sounds, and landscape shots combine to convey the nature theme so heavily embedded in the book. Franklin did a good job showing the power held by the moon and sun in the story by placing images of them in fade in/out transitions during important interactions between characters. For example we see the sun making the transition between a close up of Ultima's face to Antonio's in the moment where they first meet. As far as the acting I found a lot of the lines feeling unnatural and forced. Although a lot of the scenes involved children making it harder to get great acting I thought overall the acting in this film was poor. Was it effective? The main conflict in the book is Antonio's inner struggle but unfortunately the movie misses a few key features that causes this theme to get left out. For starters the film is narrated by Antonio but the issue is his voice is that of a grown mans. During the book he is only seven and is confused about all the new information he's getting which gives us that sense of struggle with identity. But with a grown up's voice it sounds like he already has everything figured out so we lose that aspect. They should have gotten a child for the voice over. Antonio was also struggling with the need for everlasting innocence and we saw some of that desire being crushed once he finds out his brother is at Rosie's. In the book this causes Antonio to question the world and himself but in the movie is reaction and thoughts are glossed over. Movies can't do everything the book does and overall I think the Franklin and his team did a good job apart from subpar acting and missing a few themes. Mr.Sieck's Novels into Film

The film poster says that it was based on the controversial novel. I don't know anything about that, but I feel it was referred like that for the marketing purpose. Anyway, it was a good, an unexpectedly good movie that came my way. Being a fan of the kids movie I loved it very much. Not only that, the diverged story with often the plot that meets fantasy and reality at a certain quantity was told in a great quality. It might be a story of the kid, but many stuffs were cruel and violent that I doubt does it fit for children to watch. As it set during just after the second world war, I think the harsh side of the story was extremely essential. And also being true to the book.The story was narrated from the character Antonio who takes us back to his childhood days. When he was a 7-year-old kid, he lived in a small village of the New Mexico. He was raised in a farmer family who was well respected in the town. One day an old lady called Ultima comes to join his family to live forth. Soon Antonio and Ultima begin to have a close relationship. As a medicine woman she teaches everything about mending and curing. And as a wise woman she resolves Antonio's doubts over the good and the bad. As a sudden a conflict between Ultima and a witch family from the town begin to take a wing. As a little boy nothing much he can do than witnessing which brings the end of his narration.''A man's destiny must unfold itself like a flower. With only the sun, earth and water, making it blossom.''It was from the first book of the four book series. And I am eager to know more about Antonio and his story of the different section of life. Hope they make those remaining 3 movies. This is a coming-of-age story and about a boy who is interested to become a priest which is well backed by his family. At the early age itself, he begins to learn the lessons with the help of the experienced hand. Kind of incredible journey of a little smart boy. The world he sees through his eyes was the story told about the human nature that collide between good and bad. The cast was not recognizable, probably I am seeing all of them for the first time. But the performances were very good. Apart from the boy and an old woman the remaining cast was also good. The movie was shot in the lovely places, captured beautiful dry landscapes, but there were a couple of scenes in the rain. Overall, a great movie, far from exhibiting the existing culture, but conflict remained the same. I feel like I must appreciate author as well this filmmaker to give such a nice movie.