PicoBlog

When I watched Sicario the other night, I became obsessed with 1 small stupid detail.

These random shots of dust swirling about in the air.

There’s three shots of dust flying around in the air in Sicario.

In the final mission, I’m assuming the random white dots that pop up on the night vision goggles are dust particles too, right?

Denis Villeneuve is one of the greatest directors of our time. Everything he focuses on is there for a specific reason. Why does he care so much about dust particles in Sicario?

This is why a film like this is begging to be broken down in detail with pages and pages of notes. Let’s explain a few of Sicario’s hidden details and themes starting with the dust.

If you want to see the video version of this article, click here. :)

On one hand, the dust could represent things “unseen,” which is a huge theme in Sicario. The movie speaks of ghosts and darkness and the obscurity our Intelligence Agencies operate in.

“This won’t even make the papers in El Paso,” says Steve Forsing after a US crew murders a dozen men at the Mexican border.

Light illuminates dust particles in the air, which were there the whole time, we just couldn’t see them. This is also shown at the end of the film, through the crew’s night vision goggles. I’m no expert in this sorta thing, but I’d be willing to bet those little white dots are dust particles.

Another representation could be chaos, which is exactly what Matt wants.

Kate’s boss tells her “Matt comes in, stirs the pot, and causes criminals to react and make mistakes.”

I saw the dust in the sense of the “dust kicked up” in all this chaos. And what’s a better visual representation of chaos than dust swirling about in the air with no perceivable pattern?

We’re meant to believe borders are here to protect us from our enemy in Mexico, when, terrifyingly, our enemy is right here in the form of our own government, and they have a big border between us and them, too.

You’ll see evidence of borders all over this film, whether it’s the actual border between Mexico and the USA, or a game like Soccer which has clear in-bounds and out-of-bounds lines. Kate even mentions something about Ted’s softball games—which also has foul and fair lines.

At one point, Jennings tells Kate “if your fear is operating out of bounds, you are not.”

Reggie says “CIA’s not supposed to work this side of the fence.”

Villeneuve includes many overhead shots of American neighborhoods, which have fences separating each house from the other.

Kate’s divorced. Ted’s divorced. What used to be one is now two, with a border in between.

Not to mention the start of the movie opens with a house in Phoenix being raided, and the discovery of bodies hidden between the walls.

There is so much we’re oblivious to in the United States, and that’s because the government’s got a big wall between us and them.

But there’s another important border we haven’t talked about, and that’s the line between chaos and order.

Matt says he hates lawyers.

It’s ironic because we learn that Alejandro, his biggest asset, was a lawyer in Juarez before becoming an assassin.

He tells Kate “You’re giving us the opportunity to shake the tree and create chaos.”

Which is weird, because he actually doesn’t want chaos at the end of the day. At the end of the film, he says:

“Medellin refers to a time when one group controlled every aspect of the drug trade, providing a measure of order that we could control.”

So Matt wants to use chaos to create order, an order that the United States can then control.

Alejandro tells Kate at the end of the movie that she should move to a town where the rule of law still exists, and Kate, throughout the entire movie, is obsessed with the law and doing things by the book.

And despite prosecuting now more than ever, the FBI doesn’t feel any difference on the street.

I love how Villeneuve plays around with imagery of borders in Sicario to communicate a bunch of different messages.

One of my favorite shots in Sicario is one of Kate standing in front of her mirror with her face fogged out in the reflection.

We see Kate framed in a mirror many times in this movie.

Like, a lot.

My best interpretation of this is the idea that when we look across the border at Mexico from the United States, we’re seeing a land that’s just like us.

We’re looking in the mirror.

Alejandro tells Kate that “we’ll cut a leg from them” after she’s almost choked to death, kind of like how the cartels mutilate bodies and leave them hanging from overpasses.

Steve Forsing says that it’s brilliant what the cartels do. They make it seem like the people hanging there deserved it.

There’s a level of respect and admiration between the US and the Cartels because we understand we’re both the same. We’re both wolves.

Alejandro says you need to watch out for the state police in Mexico. Same thing in the USA. Ted, a member of the US police force, is shown to be corrupt. And like the cartels would probably do to policeman in Mexico, Matt blackmails Ted, threatening his family if he doesn’t cooperate.

We kill people and leave their bodies on the pavement just like the cartels do.

Perhaps the most alarming proof of this idea is Kate’s final visit with Alejandro, who puts a gun to her head, making her sign a piece of paper saying everything they did was by the book.

Blackmail and threatening people with death to cooperate is something the cartels do every single day.

We are the same. We do the same things albeit in different ways. We are a mirror image of Mexico whether we like it or not.

After their first mission, Kate tells Matt

“You’re a fuckin spook!”

Ghosts and being scared are big themes in Sicario.

When Alejandro goes to get water, his friend tells him “I didn’t know ghosts got thirsty.”

On the private jet, Kate watches Alejandro as he’s sleeping. His hands start shaking and he wakes suddenly, scaring the bejesus out of Kate.

And at the end of the movie, Alejandro tells Kate “You look like a little girl when you’re scared.”

This is a theme. I think my favorite nail in the coffin here is the end scene, when US forces storm an underground tunnel used for crossing the border.

The night vision goggles illuminate characters in green, but the thermal vision makes them bright white, like ghosts. I thought this was such a clever visual trick from Villeneuve to show US forces, quite literally, white as ghosts. Spooking the Cartels, shaking the tree as Matt said, to create chaos and make them make mistakes.

It also plays into the whole idea that us in the United States can’t see what our government is really doing. It’s all a big obfuscation. The CIA and other intelligence agencies operate as ghosts, doing whatever they want and we’re none the wiser.

A throwaway line in Sicario is when Matt asks Kate whether she wants to find the men responsible for all this.

“Do you want to find the men responsible? This is where we start.”

It’s ironic because Kate does, in fact, find the men responsible. Us. The USA.

The Cartel boss at the end of the movie says “Do you think the men who sent you are any different? Who do you think we learned it from?”

I thought that was a super ironic line that shouldn’t be lost in the fray.

Indian Creek cigarettes is a fictional cigarette company set in the Sicario universe. Kate smokes them and the corrupt police officer in Mexico smokes them. A box of them sits next to his bed.

In many ways, Kate and Officer Silvio are mirror images of one another. They both represent the rule of law, they both got caught up in something they never wanted to get involved in, and they both use alcohol and cigarettes to help themselves cope with the truth.

That they’re living in a land of wolves, and they’re not wolves.

I think this deepens the theme of Mexico and the USA being mirror images of one another. The pawns in their schemes even use the same cigarettes.

In the hills surrounding Juarez, we can see the message “La biblia es la verdad, leela.”

That translates to “The bible is the truth. Read it.”

There’s a lot of religious messages in Sicario, starting with that one.

Alejandro says “Now you’ll learn what’s hell in Yankee Land” to Guillermo. Moments before that, Matt tells Steve “Give him a belly full of water? You devil.”

My favorite shot of Sicario is the one showing silhouettes of US soldiers against a bright Texas sunset. One by one they descend into the darkness.

Almost like they’re descending into hell.

In the cartel bosses house, we see the Virgin of Guadalupe, an extremely popular religious figure to folks here in Mexico.

There’s tons of religious artifacts and messages in Sicario. Why?

Honestly, I think it gets back to rules, borders, and what’s out-of-bounds. Religions like Christianity have a specific set of rules you have to follow.

I also found it interesting that Denis Villeneuve put in so many aerial shots in this film. I think this is meant to imply that the USA has the power of God. We see everything. There’s so many shots of cameras in this movie and drone operators spying on cartel members. We are basically God, and instead of playing by an honest set of rules, we abuse our power and act like the devil.

What did you think of this breakdown? Let me know in the comments down below. :)

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