The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a drama movie which Mary McGuckian directs. The movie was based on the novel of Thornton Wilder with the same title. The cast members of the movie include international and American actors such as Pilar López de Ayala, Harvey Keitel, Geraldine Chaplin, Gabriel Byrne, Kathy Bates, Fahrid Murray Abraham and Robert De Niro. The movie debuted in Spain in 2004, and in the United States and other countries in 2005. The novel and movie was loosely derived from the life of a well-known Peruvian entertainer named Micaela Villegas. The movie was completely narrated in flashback, the period when the back stories and lives of these five different people were told prior to the accident in the bidge of San Luis Rey in Lima, Peru.

The movie circles around five seemingly unconnected voyagers, Doña Maria, Montemayor’s Marquesa; Pepita, the personal assistant of Doña Maria; a scribe named Esteban; Uncle Pio; and a young child, who found themselves in a similar tragic accident. Five different people, on different journeys for separate reasons, were crossing the same San Luis Rey Bridge on the historic day of July 20, 1714. Brother Jupiter, a Catholic friar, witnessed the accident. Curious about the accident, Brother Jupiter asks himself if it is only an existential accident or is part of the cosmic plan of God. He then starts to interrogate anyone he could meet who personally knows the victims. After researching about the lives of the victims and disclosing it to a book, the Archbishop of Lima, Peru accused him of heresy, and is then brought to court by the Inquisition.