A doctor emerges from an iron lung and returns to his rancorous hometown, his adoring mother, and a life-threatening blood feud. In his autobiography, Buñuel wrote that while he disagreed with its simplistic premise—education is a civilizing force—what fascinated him about The River and Death is its depiction of Mexican machismo and violence. “The ease with which certain people can kill others . . . this idea runs throughout the film in the form of a series of apparently gratuitous murders. . . . Yet most of the events in the film were based on true stories.”