From the opening scene Marianne Eyde sets up the spiritual relationship between Maria, the main character, and the Sea. Set in a small, poor fishing village, the whole village revolves around the Ocean primarily for the food and income that it provides to them. Eydes' sensitive rendering of the traditional relationship of a small fishing village to the sea is filled with the colors, and smells of the ocean. I could almost feel the salt on my skin. It is against this backdrop of a traditional fishing village that Marianne Eyde skillfully juxtaposed Maria's personal spirituality. While on the surface Maria's struggle appears to be against the traditional values of the village it is really a lost or ineffective spirituality in the village that keeps her on the fringe of her community. Eyde effectively draws the relationships between men and women into this clash between the lost spirituality of the community and the vital spiritual connection of Maria to the sea.
La Carnada has the vital spirituality that I have found in some of Ruy Guerra's Movies. Particularly an earlier work that is unfortunately hard to find, "Gods and the Dead" (1970)or the "Fable of the Beautiful Pigeon Fancier" (1988). The story also has a quality that you find in some of the short stories of Gabriel García Márquez.
I have to finish with a comment on how the film ends so stop reading now if you want to watch the movie with a fresh eye and without expectation. The ending of this film, as Maria gives birth to her baby on the beach is truly one of those cinematic experiences that draws me back to the cinema searching for my own spiritual rebirth. At its best the experience of cinema is like being swallowed by a large fish in quest of an answer only to be spit out at the end with the truth you were meant to acquire rather than the answer you set out to find. For me this moment came as three of the characters that the film has effectively shown to be struggling with inner conflict, unite in the experience of birth, the baby, somehow the catharsis for all that has come before it. Thinking I was to find meaning in the sea, I found meaning at its shore.
I highly recommend this movie.
