Documentary tells story of the hardships of the Mexican circus
Through the good and bad always the circus. As spoken from Circo Mexico ringmaster and father Tino Ponce those words sum up the trials and tribulations of the family-run travelling circus in the documentary of the same name.
And tribulations they are: Life seems easy after watching the poignantly harsh and beautiful Circo which follows the Ponce family and its small yet reputable circus which has been in the family for over 100 years. At this point it’s earned plenty of accolades on the international festival circuit — having recently won the Jury Award at the Hampton’s International Film Festival — and rightfully so: For all its heartstring tugging there are compelling moral questions at stake. Circo’s doesn’t simply ask what’s right and wrong though — rather it questions the line between pride and moral duty.
The four children at the centre of the circus and the film are hardworkingtalented contortionists jugglers and tightrope walkers yet they invoke a pathos — perhaps like watching the tots in TLC’s exploitive reality television series Toddlers and Tiaras . Watching the younger kids work until they are in tears is painful but they soldier on — and so too do viewers. And while their life is unusual it’s hardly cruel — there is still a sense of love tenderness and camaraderie within the family. The older kids on the other hand revel in the attention but appear to sleepwalk like zombies through their acts as though they are trained androids.
An ever-growing rift in the family emerges when the torn father can’t choose between pleasing his difficult and dutiful father or pleasing his heartbroken wife who thinks the kids are worked to the bone. And they are. Tino Ponce however is loving and hardworking: He wants to please everyone. Pride and moral duty indeed.
The exploration of Ponce is the most compelling part of the film. He’s evidently a good man — and has a sense of duty to his father — and he knows nothing other than the circus. His wife wants a life outside the carnival for the family (and of course is demonized by her in-laws). To add to that Ponce’s siblings have already left the circus; as new generations go Ponce is the last person to carry the circus’s legacy. He lives his life on a tightrope so to speak.
On camera the children exhibit a sense of pride but this feels robotically engineered: They’re talented but they’re kids. They grow up working without play or education — the circus is all they know.
With mounting debts dwindling audiences and additional family rifts Circo isn’t Water for Elephants . This is the unwinding of a family one caught in centuries-old traditions which clasps fruitlessly onto hope for a better future. Those hardships are treated with depth and honesty by director Aaron Schock — there’s more sympathy for the human performers than the animals but the film lends itself to a curious form of pathos. Circo doesn’t leave viewers angry or contemptuous — rather it invokes a sense of yearning — melancholy perhaps. Indeed the greatest show on Earth ain’t what it used to be.
