Innocent Voices chronicles the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s from the perspective of Chava, an 11-year-old boy (Carlos Padilla) a year away from being drafted into the army.
The scenes of civil war are devastating. What sets "Innocent Voices" apart from other civil war in Latin America films is its resolute point of view through the eyes of Chava. He has no political opinions. It's an allegory about all countries where men with guns control the daily lives of the people. Some of the men are with the government, some are guerrillas, some are thieves, some are armed to protect themselves, and to the ordinary people it hardly matters: The man with the gun does what he wants, and his reasons are irrelevant -- unknown perhaps even to himself.
That is certainly the case in "Innocent Voices", where politics seem meaningless at the local level and it is simply a matter of armed men, some of them boys, who have machine guns and fire them recklessly, maybe because it is fun. Tactics and strategy seem lacking in this war; the armed teams on both sides travel the countryside, rarely encountering each other, intimidating the peasants, for whom the message from both camps is the same: Support us or we will kill you.
The movie is effective without being overwhelming. Guns make it so easy, even a child can do it. Currently 300,000 children serve in armies around the globe, losing not only their innocence, but often their lives.
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