A Place Where You Can Forget

The Movie, Men With Guns ends on a hopeful note. Our travelers find the *unfindable* Cerca del Cielo, a respite from the hardships of the world, and their discovery feels like a fresh start.

Dr. Fuentes, earlier described their hidden destination in terms that make us think of utopian destinations like Shangri-Las. Fuentes says, "Cerca del Cielo is a very special place, where the air is like a caress, where gentle waters flow, where wings of peace lift the burdens from your shoulders. A place where you can forget. A place where each day is a gift and each person is reborn. When the characters in this movie finally discover this wonderful place, we share a sense of calm.

The young soldier has found salvation. His new exodus as a healer is a rebirth, where his past does not matter. We get a sense that the young girl has found peace, even imagining that maybe the girl and the soldier will find happiness in their hideaway from the world. We can imagine a happy future, where the young soldier is a doctor and the girl is his wife, perhaps building a life filled with meaning and purpose. We can even imagine the soldier giving Conejo a home, and a place in this world, a world that has pushed him out and rejected him, transformed through the magic of Cerca del Cielo into a world where he is a treasured member of a loving household. Then Conejo would be working side-by-side with the young soldier, an assistant to the new healer, and maybe a later partner. In our mind's eye, it's easy to allow our hopes and dreams guide our predictions for their future.

The reality is probably not nearly so romantic. We can't help but reminisce about the banana people, peaceful people who hid in the trees, much like those souls who hide in Cerca del Cielo. We are reminded how the banana people got caught in the open and were gunned down from a helicopter and how the survivors were taken away. Cerca del Cielo feels like Shangri-la, but it is only a temporary respite from the world and will not remain isolated. If an inexperienced doctor and his rag-tag band can find Cerca del Cielo, then we know it's only a matter of time before the ugliness of the world reaches their remote hideaway. Whether we like it or not, it is likely that those souls who hide in Cerca del Cielo will fall to the same fate as every other town we have visited along the way. The likelihood of Conejo reaching adulthood is not particularly promising. Instead, as a healer's assistant, he will probably be one of the first to fall.