Down Mexico Way

I've always loved IMAX and the almost sadistic zeal its practitioners bring to their given task of impressing an audience, using that six-story screen and those frightening sonic detonations to send the entire theatre hurtling down a gorge, fleeing from a charging elephant, or soaring over a snowy mountain pass. No film format better captures the terror of natural grandeur. That said, I've always been disappointed at how many IMAX films start to get kind of, well, lame once their jaw-dropping intros give way to some boring story about a svelte group of rappelling grad students learning about how amazing nature is. Sheer self-sufficient spectacle, IMAX films don't need a story. Likewise, no one watching an IMAX film needs to be told nature is amazing -- if there's anything most IMAX films are about, that's it.

That's why I found Mexico -- opening Saturday, Aug. 31, at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum -- so refreshing. The film doesn't waste any of its 43 minutes following protagonists who could be portrayed just as well by a PBS special, but instead attempts to create an ambitious collage, leaping from overgrown ruins to packed soccer stadiums as it skips lightly across the country of its name, accompanied by an impressionistic voice-over adapted from the writings of Carlos Fuentes. And while the film's tone may occasionally falter -- a rapturous montage of assembly lines, in particular (oddly juxtaposed with images of a young boy hammering out a handmade pot), has about it a whiff of post-NAFTA-era corporate solicitation -- its pace never slackens. The vast IMAX landscapes -- and some of Mexico's are especially stunning, the sun-dappled hills and verdant ruins rendered with a superb eye for composition and painterly detail -- are copious and come at satisfyingly regular intervals. Mexico's spell is never broken by awkward attempts to wed those striking images to any one story; instead, the film touches on thousands of stories and links thousands of faces -- each flickering for a moment on the Story of Texas' gigantic movie screen -- to the dramatically beautiful landscape that encompasses them.

For Mexico's Saturday opening, the museum will play host to both a ballet folklórico and a mariachi band, as well as providing free activities for visiting kids, who can learn how to make piloncillo shakers and papel picado. All of this is in anticipation of National Hispanic Heritage Month -- running Sept. 15-Oct. 15 -- during which the museum will be unveiling its Spanish-language services, which include a Spanish text exhibit guide, a Spanish-language audio tour, and -- of course -- a Spanish-language version of this brisk, lovely documentary.