los olvidados

Los olvidados has a lot of huge important themes, especially since Buñuel thought of it as a documentary, but I think that the relationships are the most interesting part of the film...the relationships between the gang and their parents, the relationships within the gang, and the relationships between the gang and others such as authority figures, animals and people who are weaker than them (the blind man and the legless man).
When I first heard about this movie, I thought that the kids were orphans who started a gang, so when I saw the movie and some of the kids had parents/authority figures in their lives I thought it was interesting that they did but still choose to rebel and be part of a gang. And also that Pedro still really cares about what his mom thinks of him even though he makes a lot of bad decisions. His dream about his mother convinces him to behave, and makes him realize that his relationship with Jaibo is a bad one...Jaibo tries to control him and pulls him into situations that’ll get both of them in trouble...but even after he tries to get out of Jaibo’s influence, he can’t escape him until they’re both dead. The gang picks on people who are weaker than them, so that they can take their money, and they run away from any authority figure that could potentially punish them. Also at the beginning, it seems like Buñuel is going to have Ojitos inspire the gang members to change because he’s from the country and he’s knowledgeable, and he has a good heart. I kind of missed what was happening when he was pretending to be sick, but I thought that in general that his relationship with the blind man was important because it showed that different behaviour is possible, especially when he starts to get mad at the blind man and starts to throw a rock at him, but then chooses not to...I thought that whole scene represented the possibility of making good choices if you want to make them. I wasn’t really clear about Pedro’s relationship with animals, or why chickens/roosters kept appearing everywhere when something good or bad happened. Pedro seemed to have a soft heart for animals, which could represent the good in him, but he was still willing to kill them at the farm when he got angry.