Silver Nitrate Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD!
“Silver is, of course, an important element of spell casting, and it should be no surprise that mirrors are reputed to have occult uses, seeing as they are coated with silver. Silver nitrate film, therefore, naturally offers an acolyte a perfect medium for sealing spells. Magic rites, shot with silver nitrate film, and shown to an audience, will multiply their potency tenfold. A spell caster must be seen and heard to have a powerful effect. Magic in the dark, in the privacy of a room, does not suffice. Witchcraft cannot be hidden between walls.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s most recent novel, Silver Nitrate, is about the film industry (a little inside baseball at times), creepy curses & cults, and Mexico City. Though it takes time to get scary, I’d say the read it worth it; just have patience to reach page 100, where shit starts hitting the fan.
Sound editor Monserrat and her friend/lover Tristan meet Abel Urueta, an older film director with a strange past in the occult. Decades ago, he began making a film Beyond the Yellow Door, which became infamous for its fraught production and sudden cessation. Deeply interested in horror cinema, Monserrat feels a burning curiosity about the mysterious film and plans to tell its bizarre story in a TV episode. Meeting Abel is like a dream come true. So of course she accepts when he asks her to help him dub a lost reel of the film, which, to Abel, is like completing a ritual started many years before. But afterwards, things get weird. Focus shifts to one of Urueta’s contemporaries, Ewers, who, though deceased, seems to be haunting the trio. Montserrat must seek out the other cast members in Urueta’s film to find out how to break Ewers’ curse, but everyone has their own motivations. Montserrat and Tristan have to confront Ewers’ cult to save themselves.
The magic systems presented in the story remind me of As Above So Below, a film that posits the rules of magic are governed by belief. “If I believe it to be, so it is.” Specific rites and rituals don’t matter as much as one’s intimacy with words and symbols that matter to you. Moreno-Garcia, here, utilizes similar magic logic, which, in the context of the story, is well-earned and satisfying. This effect is born partially from the book’s inclusion of conversations about race within the magic structure.
Ewers was a believer in Aryan blood possessing the most potential for magic, thus a racial hierarchy follows, placing indiginiety at the bottom furthest from the magical realm. Whether this hierarchy is just or correct in any way is irrelevant; Ewers believes it and therefore it is so. Montserrat challenges this racist belief not only in word but in action, revealing a great capacity for magic herself, according to her own rites and rituals. Ewers’ white supremacist ideology has no power over her.
If I’m being critical, there were times when the exposition was over-explained, losing some of the thrill of ambiguity. It felt like the book was explaining to us a lot. I wonder if some of the scariness was minimized by the duller sense of having too much information without knowing why we need to know it.
I will point out that Montserrat and Tristan’s relationship is very fun to read. I related to Montserrat’s frustration with her long-time friend, who sees her crush on him and runs from it. Their love story fluidly weaves in and out of the horrors of being cursed; their hardships positioning them for a deserved ending that I think most readers will appreciate.
I hope to read Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic soon!