A portrait from Gods of Mexico (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Gods of Mexico is precisely the kind of work of art conceived to rethink what documentaries can do. Directed by Helmut Dosantos (his official debut as a director after several credits as a producer and cinematographer), the film is introduced as “a portrait of a nation through its lands and peoples.” The nation here is Mexico, the lands are rural regions, and its people are Indigenous who maintain a direct contact with an almost virgin land, detached from the modernist modifications of architecture and urbanism. The keyword here is “portrait,” which suggests a formal representation of something real, as interpreted by the filmmaker.

A visual poem seems a more adequate definition for the film, which is structured like movements of a symphony, though accompanied by silence, white noise, and a cacophony of natural sounds instead of music. The title of the first and last sections—“White” and “Black,” respectively—are shot in color, while the central chapter is photographed in black-and-white, divided into regions presented with names of Aztec gods (Quetzalcóatl, Huitzilopochtli), instead of the Spanish designations by the colonizers. In this way, the beginning and end behave more like what one might expect from a documentary (though without voice-overs or testimonies) as it closely observes two particular forms of labor that are significant for the region’s economy.

“White” focuses on the methodical process of extracting salt. The camera follows workers in their task and when they rest. (Two sleep in an embrace. Are they lovers or just friends warming each other?) Many of the instantly unforgettable shots suggest direction from the filmmaker, and the results evoke the kind of beauty that would surely be overlooked by a filmmaker who only wants to simply portray reality. (Dosantos also figures as editor and cinematographer.) In “Black,” something similar occurs, but this time focusing on the work of miners, a more difficult (and dirtier) job when it comes to visual clarity since it involves immersion into the dark depths of the earth.

Meanwhile, the central section, longer and more enigmatic, focuses on a parade of living portraits in motion and sound, capturing landscapes, families, and individuals set against the environment. The static camera predominates, with the “models” patiently posing in front of the camera as if they’re waiting for the artist to complete his canvas or the old daguerreotypes to finally capture an image.

Indigenous faces and bodies intertwined with the land around them in the director’s calculated stagings. The result is surreal, magical to a certain point that often gives the impression of a hallucination. As we become more attuned to this incessant flow of images, we begin to get a glimpse of their mythical and poetic aspects, that intangible reality that we may presume only language can describe, measure, and explain. Dosantos has dispensed with language, at least with the one that inevitably requires words, to let his visuals and sounds bring us closer to the surrounding world.

Gods of Mexico is a rich visual text full of vitality and a sublime rarity in an era where many have forgotten how to stop and merely look. It’s also a prodigious example of a filmmaker’s quest for arresting imagery.