Circo (2010)

Circo is the documentary of Tino Ponce, who along with his wife, children and other family relations travels across the Mexican countryside to carry on their family tradition of running a travelling circus in order to follow in his brother’s footsteps and to please his father. In order to keep the circus running, he employs his children as performers for the circus doing various acts such as trapeze artists and even animal taming. As a result of the children labouring away 24/7 and getting no education and effectively no childhood, there is hostility between Tino and his wife as Tino believes that the children should carry on the tradition and has brought up his children to believe that the circus is their life, but his wife believes that their children should be given a proper childhood and wants them to live an ordinary life, away from the circus. Ultimately Tino must choose between pleasing his parents and putting his wife and children first – a decision which tears him between the sacredness of his family tradition and the importance of his family’s well-being. This was my first documentary film I had seen so I went into it with no general idea of what it would be like and a very open minded view. However it hasn’t influenced me to watch more of these types of films. Starting with the pros of the film; this film is an excellent insight into the travelling culture and the struggles, hardships and strong bonds between family that is part of that culture and of their everyday lives. This they did very well as it felt as though we were looking into a slice of their lives rather than it being a formal interview style as the family members are very open, personal and come straight from the heart. The cinematography in this film is also very good and clearly emphasises upon the different ideologies between Tino and his wife. However there are a few cons to this film as I actually found it very boring which is probably because documentaries (as I have found out) aren’t my type of film, so this film just didn’t appeal to me. Overall I would say that this film is good for people who like documentaries and it does have deep, heart-warming qualities to it, but I personally didn’t find it very enjoyable and would say that it was just ok. 3/5 stars.