Film analysis with historical theme - Research Paper Example

ty in the United States in comparison to the poverty of South America and the resulting desperation, the film does open up the discussion and provide a beginning toward the hope of a solution to the problems of labor abuses and poverty. Maria’s journey is an example of the hard choices that must be made when economic pressure leaves one vulnerable to exploitation. The story of Maria Full of Grace follows the journey of a young, teenage woman who is pregnant and chooses to act as a mule for drug runners after losing her job due to unfair treatment by her boss, in order to provide an income for herself, her coming child, and the rest of her family in Columbia.

After a brush with authorities at the airport, she and the other mules who came with her are taken to a motel room where one of the women experiences a rupture of one of the drug balloons and dies. The drug runners cut open her body to retrieve the drugs, and in fear Maria and another mule escape from the room, taking with them the drugs. Ultimately, Maria decides to stay within the United States in order to give her child and herself a chance through the opportunities that she perceives that do not exist in her own country.

The film portrays the economic climate of Columbia where drug cartels rule the nation. The drug trade is the core of the nature of economic stability in Columbia and once in the United States, the characters find themselves facing the hope of opportunity that they did not have in their home country. According to Boyd, the director was attempting to “perceive as the link between history and biography and the relationship between the two in society, our personal troubles, and the social structures” (140).

A criticism that Boyd discusses, however, is that no connection between the complicity of the United States to the drug trade in Columbia, as well as fully explore the state of exploited women within the dynamic of that atmosphere. Boyd states that “Poor and racialized women are