Machuca director Andrés Wood has this to say about Chile's climate of "cultural self-censorship": "Talk about the future of Chile, and 80 percent of the people will happily agree with you. Talk about the past, and people fight, screaming." With Machuca, Wood tries to find a way to talk about that past while doing an end-run around divisive politics. He succeeds by choosing protagonists who don't really understand the situation well enough to form any strong opinions beyond their own emotions: 11-year-old boys.
Like Wood, floppy-haired Matías Quer comes from the posh side of town; Ariel Mateluna is from the other side. Under normal circumstances, they would never meet, but reform-minded priest Ernesto Malbran changes that when he decides to bring students who can't afford tuition into his private school. Though wary at first, Quer strikes up a friendship with Mateluna, helped across ethnic and class boundaries by the taunts and abuse of his bigoted classmates. Drawn into Mateluna's world, he learns some of the basics of working-class survival and gains first-hand knowledge of the coming clash: Joined by Mateluna's comely neighbor (Manuela Martelli), Quer helps sell flags to anti-communist protestors, then moves a few blocks to meet the needs of the communist youth parade.
Though Machuca ultimately doesn't shy away from taking sides, it wisely keeps the focus on the human element. The politics take place in the background until they demand the foreground. One day, Quer, Martelli, and Mateluna use a can of condensed milk as an excuse to engage in a kissing game. Though the milk stays sweet, the game eventually sours as the conflict between the "snobs" of Quer's neighborhood (as Martelli dubs them) and the "people they don't need to know" (as one privileged parent refers to the working class) spills down to the next generation. In time, it erupts into violence, but while Wood portrays the chilling bloodshed, he centers the tragedy at the heart of his subtly realized portrait of the time as much on the long-term loss of common ground as the immediate loss of life. His film spends reels showing the ways in which the lives of Chile's people intertwine, and the bad faith needed to deny that connection. Then a vision of the future based on bad faith—with none of Quer's youthful optimism—subsumes the country. No wonder it still provokes fighting and screaming.