“I remember my childhood as a long, interminable, and sad time, filled with fear—fear of the unknown.” / “There are things I cannot forget. It seems unbelievable how memories can be so… so strong.”
Cría Cuervos isolates us within the psychological dissonance of a child forced to actively invent the ghosts of her parents just to navigate the wreckage of their absence. She watches them fight, wither away, and offer warmth that no longer exists in the real world. Carlos Saura directs this with a very cold eye, he forces a little girl to stare directly at the ugly adult machinery of dying, postwar ruin, and infidelity. It’s a bizarrely isolating watch.
The lens stays stubbornly glued to Ana’s point of view, it proves that even when children lack the vocabulary to digest the rot around them, they absorb every single detail. She registers the betrayals of her fascist father and the plague of sickness at home with an eerie clarity. Her innocence does not just fade with time, it mutates entirely. Mortality turns into a heavy, creeping shadow that hides in the corners of her house. She starts asking metaphysical questions about the end of things, eventually spiraling into an obsession where she might just cross a lethal line herself. Ana continuously summons the apparition of her dead mother, pulling her back into the physical realm out of sheer emotional necessity. The film portrays this specific mother-daughter bond as a desperately beautiful coping mechanism, conjuring her to escape the harsh reality, process grief, and seek comfort when she feels overwhelmed.
The film weaves reality, fantasy, and memory together so seamlessly that the boundaries dissolve entirely. It glides between what is happening, what is remembered, and what is merely imagined without any friction. Perhaps the fluid blending acts as a mirror for how a child actually processes a world they cannot fully comprehend?
What makes it so devastating and somewhat disturbing is the contrast. You get these sudden, absurd spikes of humor and a ridiculously catchy pop song playing over a deeply sad psychological study. Her logic is entirely skewed but makes total sense for a grieving kid trying to gain control over a helpless situation. Her actions lean into the extreme, but the reasoning and emotions behind them is completely, incredibly, painfully human. It captures exactly what it is like to be small and terrified of losing everyone, making sense of death and permanent absence, it truly feels too real. Incredible watch!
(I truly lack the words to describe this film and how it has moved me, how it has broaden my view and understanding… It’s just so incredibly fascinating to say the very least)
