Debut: ‘Carne de Dios’ is a Macabre and Arresting Jewel
In Patricio Plaza’s animated short Carne de Dios (Flesh of God), a young girl runs into a monk in an eerie crop field. His cross necklace swings in the warm light as he ominously palms her face and lips. Her encounter with the monk sets off a nightmarish set of occurrences.
Later in his journey through the field, the monk becomes woozy and feverish, awakening in a strange room with a man and an elderly woman who give him a mysterious tea before blessing a handful of magical mushrooms. The monk watches helplessly as they chant and wave the mushrooms around his sweating face, eventually forcing them into his mouth. The monk falls ill, his consciousness flitting in and out as the pair chant towards the sky, echoing through the cave in which they’ve trapped him.
As the monk reels, a Christ figure’s eyes burst into red light, glowing as the figure becomes sentient and falls from its cross. The monk is pursued by this strange Christ-demon, which morphs into various slimy forms to terrorize the monk’s mind and body. The demon’s pursuit of the monk becomes increasingly troubling, implicating violent – though ambiguous – sexual and metaphorical themes.
There is no dialogue in this film, a fact that lends its message to a more broad interpretation. There is no language barrier, and the viewer draws meaning from only music and effects. Well-placed sound effects mix with only snippets of voices to punctuate its macabre visuals. The animation shifts in color, form, and texture, which mix expertly with crisp foley for an immersive and disturbing journey.
Carne de Dios is transgressive, no doubt about it. By combining the implied use of hallucinogens, a demon Christ, and explicit sexual themes, this animated short is sure to leave viewers uncomfortable, if not disturbed. But its animation style is unique, with dynamic coloring, sketch-like visuals, and watercolor-washed landscapes. The viewer’s immersion in a moody and surreal world is a palatable delivery system for some pretty taboo themes. Carne de Dios presents more questions than answers – why is this monk stalking the child, is he a predator? Up to no good? Who are the woman and man who feed him mushrooms and send him on his disturbing journey? What do the recurring themes of iconoclastic sexuality mean, especially amidst so much Catholic imagery? Who or what does Christ – the demon – represent?
In the film’s conclusion, the young girl comes across the monk again, but in a role reversal, as she is the one towering above him, the one with power. Carne de Dios ends a harrowing diegesis with a reclamation of power, perhaps implicating organized religion in the distressing experiences of its characters. Critics theorize that the healers who force the monk through his horrifying odyssey represent the Indigenous population upon whom organized Catholicism was forced by colonizers and missionaries, whom the monk represents. In this reading, the return of power to the young girl over the monk represents a small retribution for centuries of trauma.
Carne de Dios showed in the 2023 Annecy International Animation Festival this July, where it garnered positive reviews from critics and audiences. Though its message is nebulous, there is much room for interpretation. Perhaps Plaza’s goal was not to make a definitive statement about Catholicism, or any specific religion. Though there is a clear theme of playing with the idea of power and control, who holds it, and why, this theme can be projected onto many different groups. Indeed, Carne leaves the characters’ affiliations amorphous enough for its themes to be universal. The short serves to feed viewers food for thought, digestible into whatever meaning their own lived experience may place upon it. Regardless of viewers’ unique takeaways, Plaza’s masterpiece demands attention.