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A cart filled with green chile bounces down a dirt road; an owl soars over the Sandia mountain peaks; a mother leads her lace-clad children to church.
“From the heart of the land that is our land, from the heart of the culture that is our culture — comes the controversial book that was banned, forbidden and burned.”
So begins the movie trailer for “Bless Me, Ultima,” Rudolfo Anaya’s New Mexican masterpiece turned film. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the novel’s publication, and the film that took six years to complete premieres in Albuquerque on Friday.
Author and former UNM professor Rudolfo Anaya, often considered the father of Chicano literature, said the story’s popularity never ceases to amaze him.
“I never even imagined it would sell 10 copies,” he said. “When I was writing it, I was trying to stay in the zone on creativity and pay attention to the story I was developing. The future was just something else.”
He said the story was based on his experiences as a child working on his grandfather’s farm in Puerto de Luna, near Santa Rosa, N.M.
“The theme is learning from a mentor, the elder,” he said. “The history of the people and the land, the history of the plants and how they use them for good, and I think people respond to that relationship.”
Anaya said he was approached by an independent film production group about six years ago to buy the rights to the book. A representative flew to Baja California, Mexico where Anaya was vacationing, just to convince him to sell the rights. From there, the director and writer contacted him for assistance adapting the story for the screen.
A few significant changes were made to the story in the adaptation process, but Anaya said the movie stays true to the heart and spirit of the novel.
“As the author of the novel, I have to remember that the entire novel cannot be put into a two-hour film,” he said. “It’s almost like a novel becoming a short story. The screenplay writer has to pick and choose a narrative line of development, what makes the story work on the screen. And that’s completely different from how the story is working in a book that you’re holding in your hand and reading.”
Actor Benito Martinez grew up in Albuquerque’s South Valley and has acted in notable films and shows such as “Sons of Anarchy,” “The Shield,” “Burn Notice” and “24.”
“This project came up and I was like ‘Oh my God, I cannot believe it,’” Martinez said. “I was a little bit skeptical, and then I read the script and it was so true to the book, I thought ‘Oh, I have to do this.’”
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Martinez, who plays Gabriel, the main character’s father, said the script alone convinced him to participate in the movie.
“If it’s not on the page, it’s so much work to try to fix it when you’re on set,” he said. “So this is one of the best scripts I’ve ever come across, because it stays true to the original material.
Some of it was cut out, but what was in there was very true to the heart of the story.”
Martinez said he has had a variety of acting experiences. His head was chopped off in “Supernatural,” he was hung in the air by a tree in “Mandrake” and he beat people up in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” But he said there’s always more to learn.
“In ‘Bless Me, Ultima,’ Gabriel is a lot like my father,” he said. “My father is originally from a ranch near Santa Fe, he grew up with horses, he was very much about the earth and the soil and his family ways and his group of friends. I remember when I left home how hard it was for me to leave my dad, and there’s a scene where the boy is leaving and I’m so sad. I remember those moments, and I’m now seeing them through my father’s eyes.”
“Bless Me, Ultima” has been banned from many public schools across the nation, but Anaya said it doesn’t worry him too much.
“Every time ‘Bless Me, Ultima’ got banned somewhere, my fellow writers would call me and say ‘Hey, how can I get my book banned?’” he said. “It creates publicity, it creates an interest and people want to know what could be so terrible about this simple story of a mixed boy growing up in New Mexico in the 1940s with a curandera. Ban a book and people will rush to read it.”
Anaya said there are only a few major films dealing with Mexican-American topics, and he hopes the film will inspire filmmakers to delve further into these types of stories.
“I think it comes at an important time in our history, and I only hope that it gets enough attention so that other producers can begin to look at our lives and our stories and say ‘There’s a lot of good stuff here for movies. We don’t have to do car crashes all the time,’” he said.
“Bless Me, Ultima”
Friday 1:30, 4:20, 7:15, 10:05 p.m.
Cinemark Century 14 Downtown
100 Central Ave. S.W.
