My Review of "Nadie Sabe Que Estoy Aqui (Nobody Knows I'm here)"

Nadie Sabe Que Estoy Aqui (Nobody Knows I'm Here) is a Spanish film that seemed really interesting from its movie trailer. The trailer basically shows us that there's this kid that was really good at singing but for some reason he's later isolated to a remote area in his adult life. He looks miserable and disturbed so I was intrigued at what the story had in store. I decided to take the plunge and there was much more to this movie than I thought.

This movie starts with the main character Memo as a child. He's got a voice of an angel and he's auditioning for some job. The main guy making the music is talking with Memo's father and he basically tells him that he loves his voice but that's all they're going to use. It's apparent that Memo isn't the good looking kid that they wanted an image of for their new pop sensation.

Fast forward to Memo's present day and he's working in a remote sheep farm with his uncle. It's very apparent that he's self isolating because he doesn't want to interact with anyone except for his uncle. He still dreams of performing and ponders what could have been.

All this comes to a screeching halt when his uncle gets into a horrific accident that leaves Memo all alone. One of their family friends, Marta, feels bad for Memo and decides to visit him everyday. Memo takes a liking to her but when she finds out his little secret everything kind of falls into chaos. All of Memo's secrets start to spill and we realize why he's been self isolating for so long.

There's so much to this movie and they packed this movie with a lot of details. It discusses the value of beauty in our media. They could only take Memo's voice because it was beautiful but it didn't match his face so they decided to replace it with another person. That itself can be quite traumatizing for a young person but he went through even more than that and as the movie progresses we really feel bad for him.

We kind of see why he's the way he is and people continue to treat him as such later on in the movie and we kind of root for Memo to grow a spine and fight for himself. Then again he's in such a crazy situation by the end of the movie that I don't know how I'd even react if I was put into the same situation.

They also discuss the pervasiveness of the media. When the media catches wind of the Memo story there are some pretty creepy things that happen and I can kind of see this happening in reality. How celebrities can live with such intrusive paparazzi I will never understand. Memo has no way of defending himself from these media hounds either so it seems even worse in his case.

There are a few ambiguous things that happen throughout the movie. I guess the ambiguity is kind of placed there on purpose but it makes you kind of wonder about things and for the most part some of the answers are never really answered. This movie really has the audience trying to figure out things for themselves and in a way it's kind of refreshing but some people may find this extremely frustrating. The ending specifically is somewhat of a did he or didn't he kind of ending. There's no concrete ending and it kind of ends with the audience trying to use their own imagination to figure out what really happened. Maybe this was made famous from the movie Inception.

Overall, I did like the movie for the fact that they explored this traumatized character and how he copes with such a terrible past. The movie however can be a little slow for some people. It takes a little patience to get into but it was satisfying to me. I have to give this movie a 7 out of 10. I don't think I would be recommending this movie to just about everyone but it's an okay diversion.