. This poetic essay in a surrealistic mode is seemingly inspired by Luis Buñuel's L'age d'or, but its images reveal how truly surrealistic the Mexican aesthetic is. Non-narrative vignettes set disconcertingly to classical music show that a mythic obsession with death and violence is rooted in the poverty of life “in this stupefying benumbed land. Everyone here is dead with no place to drop over.” The words are those of Juan Rulfo, but don't be surprised when the narrator begins to speak backwards. Extraordinarily beautiful compositions belie their macabre content, from the slaughter of a steer to the slyly humorous lassoing of a businessman. The underlying theme is a probe of the Mexican's “lack of identity with himself”; we won't say what the “secret formula” refers to, except to mention that it's the real thing.