Director/co-writer Nicolás Echevarría profoundly missed an opportunity to make this otherwise flawed film memorable by failing to let the sub-titles (in English for this viewer) mirror de Vaca's gradual understanding of the language he learned as an 8 year captive. The indigenous people were shown to be of a different-than-Western civilization; extremely different in cultural day to day living. But he learned how to speak and hear them, understand them. By sharing his gradual ability to think like them, with us the audience, we too could have seen their being 'foreign' gradually change into kinship . This would make the ending of the movie, as the Spanish conquistadors force the people into slavery, misery and premature death, much more effecting. As it is it's solely de Vaca's humanity that cries from the screen instead of the humanity of the people we should have learned to know as individuals, as well as his.
Review of Cabeza de Vaca
