Paolo Tizón’s documentary Night Has Come takes viewers on an arduous journey into rigorous military training. Released in 2020, the film follows a group of young Peruvian recruits as they prepare to serve in dangerous anti-drug missions. Tizón spent ten months embedded with this unit, granting unprecedented access. Through his intensive style, we experience the recruits’ evolution virtually firsthand.
Tizón favored an observational approach over traditional interviews. His handheld camera places us amid the recruits, close enough to hear their labored breathing during drills. We learn about their backgrounds through natural conversations rather than overt exposition. Some just want to prove themselves, while personal issues like strained family ties also drive others. Overall, Tizón humanizes these men so we understand their motivations beyond solely their profession.
Night Has Come immerses us in this training like no other film. Tizón’s authentic captures of punishing physical tests convey their toll. His sound design pulls us into their world to the point where chants seem to surround us as if we were running alongside them. Through this all-consuming approach, we gain profound respect for what these recruits endure in preparation for highly dangerous service. Their dedication deserves recognition, as does Tizón’s in bringing their experiences to such vivid life. His documentary sets a new standard for intimate, impactful non-fiction war films.
Immersive Perspective
Paolo Tizón adopted an unvarnished style that places viewers amid the action. Without interviews or voiceover, he simply observes the recruits, letting moments unfold naturally. This lends intensity, as we learn organically beside Tizón rather than through overt explanation.
He forged a vivid first-person experience through technical choices. Tizón gripped his camera, keeping shots intimate to match his up-close relations with the men. When recruits endure torrents or chant in darkness, his audio pulls us in like we’re beside them. We feel the strains and solidarity as if among their ranks.
This stark immersion draws us deeply into the recruits’ realities. The rigorous training seems our own ordeal through Tizón’s raw images and enveloping sound. His authentic access also grants insight we’d not find elsewhere. Casual talks reveal recruits as whole people, while their bonds emerge clearly.
Tizón respected his subjects by stepping back and allowing their humanity to shine through unaided. Though demands were extraordinary, he ensures we recognize the ordinary men within each recruit braving ordeals alongside friends. By witnessing their journey so directly, viewers share the intimate perspectives that make their sacrifices profoundly moving. Tizón’s restrained style is what lifts Night Has Come from mere footage to an artfully powerful documentary.
Beyond the Uniform
Night Has Come peels back layers of the recruits’ lives beneath their uniforms. Tizón captures casual conversations that ground these driven men as multidimensional people.
We witness intimate discussions between colleagues. Homesickness lingers as they swap stories of loved ones. One recruit frets while calling his mother, the strain in their bond laid bare. Others seek escape from challenges through flashy action films.
Two recruits face clearly the harshest backgrounds. One survives a father’s abuse to earn paternal respect through service. The other battled his family’s hardship alone from a young age. Though committed to duty, ghosts of their pasts remain.
These intimate moments pull us closer to each recruit as an individual. Beyond feats of strength and skills of war, we find young adults still grappling with relationships and identity. Their ordinary passions show that, no matter the mission, a human spirit fills each uniform.
By rounding out recruits this way, Tizón shows their service stems from whole lives—not just military ambition. Though training reads as far from normal youth, familiar struggles still reside within barracks walls. This balance of light and dark fosters sympathy for recruits’ sacrifices amid harrowing surroundings. Their pursuit of purpose through peril becomes much more profoundly understandable.
Harsh Education
Paolo Tizón spares no detail depicting these recruits’ unforgiving initiation. from brutal physical trials to exercises that challenge body and mind.
We witness the harsh realities of their conditioning firsthand. Torrents blast recruits as if wartime flash floods, nearly sweeping them away. Long endurance stretches leave trembling muscles devoid of strength.
In one horrifying scene, live fire leaves a comrade stunned and bleeding on harsh earth. Though stabilizing the wounded, harsh training persists to imprint its lessons for when injury may mean the difference between living or dying in the cocaine valley.
Nothing prepares viewers for the night sequence’s sensory immersion, though. As darkness swallows the jungle, cacophonous chants and rhythmic tramping simulate warfare’s deafening terror. With only flashes of gunfire to see by, the all-consuming audio draws us into recruits’ lived experience of terror and fortitude amid the unknown.
Through punishing scenes like these, Tizón grants unprecedented insight into why these men must prepare with such intensity. When facing heavily armed drug gangs, wavering for an instant could prove fatal. His unflinching conveyance of training’s extremes and casualties communicates the duty’s unvarnished demands, why recruits are willing to endure infinite hardship, and how their preparation may alone guarantee returning home.
Enduring Bonds
Night Has Come leaves an impression difficult to forget. Through sensory verisimilitude, it taps raw emotions and universal themes.
Tizón’s unflinching style forces reflection on what it takes to withstand grueling trials. We glimpse mental and physical boundaries pushed to their brink. The recruits’ fraternity proves a lifeline, their loyalty holding fast through shared ordeals.
Moments of levity—games, gossip, shows watched off-hours—give texture to lives otherwise steeped in discipline. This juxtaposition underscores recruits’ dual nature: soldiers hardened for danger yet ordinary men with hopes beyond their duty. Their poet Bond transcends superficial masculinity tropes.
Across clashing worlds of training and telephone calls lives a poignant self-discovery. Facing history and future, each recruit pursues purpose through service—whether to impress fathers or escape personal demons. Their driven spirit resonates with anyone chasing dreams in life’s face.
Few films impart military sacrifice’s weight. Rarer still, one makes their humanity so viscerally clear. By walking with these men through trials most never witnessed, Tizón’s documentary will endure as a stirring tribute to courage wherever danger Calls fellow men to stand together against uncertainty.
Capturing Courage on Camera
Through his technical prowess, Paolo Tizón transports viewers into raw, unflinching reality. With cinematography that mirrors his intimate access, viewers stand beside recruits through every rigor.
Tizón’s camera placements and handheld shots place the screen mere inches from fatigued faces and straining muscles. We feel each droplet assaulting skin as a personal barrage. Each hollered order seems directed at us alone in these moments.
But the film transcends even visual verité through its soundscape. Engineered to fully submerge us, percussive chants and slamming waves envelop the mind’s theater. Impact resounds physically through clever audio arrangements.
Subtle directorial choices likewise deepen immersion. Natural lighting shrouds pivotal scenes in the very tension recruits experience. Formidable hurdles unfold before us much as they did the recruits.
Through technical mastery delivering tactile, all-consuming filmcraft, Tizón transports audiences to live these trials of courage. His debut documentary sets a high watermark for the art form’s potential to bring even the most grueling realities intimately to life.
Enduring Testimony
Paolo Tizón’s film delivers a visceral experience, but its impacts reach deeper. Through striking candidness, Night Has Come brings recruits’s training vividly to life while sustaining their humanity.
This review has discussed Tizón’s immersive successes. His intimate access conveys training’s brutal realities alongside recruits’ inner lives. Sounds and images plunge us into their world totally. Such artistry leaves impacts not soon forgotten.
By walking with these men through intense trials, the film serves as more than spectacle. It stands as a compelling documentary of courage for the modern age. Tizón illuminates ordinary people rising to extraordinary challenges and the bonds that strengthen their spirit.
Although focused on a single unit, the film resonates on a grand scale. In revealing soldiers’ sacrifices and burdens, it reminds all who watch of duties taken to defend others far away. Night Has Comes enduring testimony will ensure these recruits’ stories continue illuminating the strength of human character for many more to see.
The Review
Night Has Come
Paolo Tizón's Night Has Come immerses viewers in recruit training with unflinching intensity, granting profound respect for these young men's dedication and sacrifice. Though challenging in parts, the film succeeds through technical mastery and authentic access in conveying modern soldiering's profound human costs and rewards. It will endure as a moving documentary experience.
PROS
- Immersive, observational documentary style that pulls viewers deeply into the recruits' experiences
- Authentic, intensive access to the recruits' lives and training process
- Provides powerful and visceral depiction of the punishing physicality and mental demands of the training.
- Humanizes the recruits by portraying their personal backgrounds, challenges, and ordinary human qualities.
- High production values with impressive cinematography and sound design that add to the intensity
CONS
- Some sequences of lesser interest, like longer gym/recreative scenes
- Could have been judiciously trimmed from its 95-minute runtime.
- May be too intense or challenging for audiences not prepared for its unflinching realism.
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