Ido Mizrahy’s “Gored”, which premiered in New York at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival, stars bullfighter Antonio Barrera. He is reputed to be the most gored bullfighter in modern matador history. Since he is still alive, certainly it is difficult to call him the least successful.
The ones who died by getting trampled to death or had a bull’s horn puncture their heart presumably fared worse. If we accept the premise that Barrera has been gored more than any other matador, you could make the argument that he is the luckiest one ever.
When we first meet Barrera, he is preparing for his final performance. Mizrahy does a good job of making us care about him as he prepares to enter the ring for the last time, but because of my total and utter distaste for the sport of bullfighting, I knew that no matter how it was presented, I hoped that the tortured bull would put a horn through Barrera’s body and kill him. Unfortunately, I left disappointed because Barrera survived again.
The endearing part is watching the hapless Barrera getting smacked around over and over. He constantly gets bloodied, loses pieces of clothing, and looks beat up after every battle. Somehow Barrera maintains his bravado, which to me only makes him more of an idiot. He says “I had already lost respect for death” when being interviewed by Mizrahy.
We really don’t learn all that much of the behind-the-scenes of Barrera’s life. We meet his wife and she’s appropriately concerned about her husband’s well-being, but that’s about as in-depth as it gets here. We’re left with an overview of the man that is only defined by his failures in the ring. We really don’t learn very much. The only positive is watching him in the ring and getting pleasure from watching bulls almost kill him. That’s fun, but it’s not enough. If only he had really been gored.
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