by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
In rural Mexico, a mine worker’s mundane existence is disrupted when he discovers a dead body along his route home, leading him down an unforeseen path that changes everything in Copper.
On his way home from work, Lázaro finds a body on the side of the road. He pauses, stares with a perplexed look, then walks away. At home, when family and friends ask why he didn’t do anything, he shrugs and eats fruit. Later, at his doctor’s office, he complains of breathing problems in the mine. Despite being told to stop smoking, he pleads for a work excuse instead. His repeated efforts to be taken seriously only underline how much is already going wrong for him.
Written by Nicolás Pereda and Juan Francisco Maldonado, Copper stars Lázaro G. Rodríguez (playing another variation of “Lázaro” from a previous Pereda film), alongside Rosa Estela Juárez, Teresa Sánchez, and Francisco Barreiro, familiar collaborators for longtime followers of Pereda. The film is directed by Pereda, whose signature style (Fauna, Lázaro at Night) relies on minimal narratives, mundane-seeming dialogue, and quietly profound results.
At first glance, Copper seems to resist the plot altogether. The story follows Lázaro through a string of unremarkable yet subtly absurd moments. He disregards medical advice, begs to be excused from work with odd persistence, and moves through conversations with doctors, friends, and family that feel both authentic and slightly off. Life plays out half a beat away from expectation.
This is where the humor emerges. Pereda doesn’t write jokes; he constructs ordinary scenarios whose understated strangeness becomes funny. The comedy is so dry it borders on invisible, yet that’s what makes it land. Lázaro’s speech is flat and uninflected, but the timing is skewed just enough to draw out quiet laughs. His delivery feels natural, lived-in, and unintentionally hilarious.
The performances mirror the direction: restrained, anti-theatrical, deeply convincing. Rodríguez is exceptional, embodying stillness and fatigue that suggest a man at odds with himself. He isn’t trying to be funny, which makes him even funnier. Sánchez and Barreiro match the tone, giving the impression of real people observed in the flow of modest lives.
Beneath the comedy lies weight. The film sketches a portrait of working-class life in Mexico shaped by bureaucracy, stagnation, and spiritual erosion. Lázaro is not only a deadpan presence but a man quietly worn down by circumstance. His refusal to acknowledge the corpse is both absurd and revealing: a sign of a man too used to hardship to react.
Pereda’s style recalls cinéma vérité yet remains carefully curated. Scenes linger past their natural endpoint, turning silence, glances, and pauses into meaning. He trusts viewers to find significance in rhythm rather than plot in the way Lázaro eats fruit while others worry, or in the spaces where a conventional story would rush in with action.
Some audiences may find Copper aimless, others minimalist. But those in tune with Pereda’s rhythm will discover sly humor and unexpected depth. The film uses what looks like nothing to probe everything: exhaustion, apathy, absurdity, and the quiet persistence of moving forward when the reason is unclear.
You may leave Copper unsure of its “point,” but you will understand Lázaro. That, ultimately, is the point.
Grade: C