Scott Reviews Mark Kendall’s La Camioneta [Theatrical Review]

A sort of Au Hasard Busazar, Mark Kendall’s documentary La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus is fascinating in concept, but surprisingly uninvolving in execution. The film follows one American school bus, one of dozens that get transported to Guatemala every day for this same purpose, as it is sold at auction, driven across the border, sold again, and rebuilt as a private city bus upon which the majority of residents will count to make their daily commute. In addition to this rather unusual market that has emerged, Guatemalan gangs have made the business of bus driving nearly impossible, demanding outrageous extortion and killing those who do not comply. All of this makes for a worthwhile subject, and whatever quality the film has in inherent to the interest surrounding it, but Mark Kendall is unable to render this cinematically.

Most important of all, Kendall’s human subjects do not make for good protagonists. As the bus transfers hands from owner to owner, auto shop to paint shop and finally driver, we come to meet many people, but only the initial driver from the United States to Guatemala is able to provide any personal and social context to what he’s doing. He recognizes the tremendous workload (sixteen-hour drives), the time it means away from his family, and the danger he puts himself in every time he makes the trip. He discusses the ways he and other drivers avoid confrontation, and avoid catastrophic consequences when confrontation does occur. In other words, he knows how to contribute to the film. Normally, one would say Kendall knows how to get him to discuss these angles, but as none of the other subjects display the ability, with Kendall content simply to observe their rather banal interactions and only occasionally interesting activities. The paint shop guys even have an inherently cinematic job, but even that rarely feels as though it has grabbed Kendall’s interest.

So he turns, naturally, to the problem of gang violence, spending a bit of time with police squads, government hearings, and crime scenes, all of which allow us to intellectually register the horror these people face, but never really get us up close and personal with its victims. None of the film’s subjects have direct interactions with gangs (one says he has to pay them off, but we never see this happen); even the bus remains safely tucked away in various yards. The total effect of all this is one of very safe remove, only able to remind Western audiences (and since its director hails from Pennsylvania, I don’t think this is primarily intended for a South American crowd) that this is all something happening “over there.” He attempts to bring it back around at the end, by reminding us of the school bus’s origins, but it’s too little connective tissue too late.

La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus screens Saturday, January 11th at 5pm and 7pm at the Whitsell Auditorium.