short one, but Javier's apparent recovery leads Juan to plan to go far away from Ana. Sending Javier to his lawyer's office, Juan uses the occasion to see Ana one last time, but he is overcome by his emotions and tries to kiss her. Just then Javier returns, and in Juan's version of the story, it is Javier who accidentally shoots and kills Ana. Javier, now gravely ill and mentally overcome, runs out of his cell to the monastery's pipe organ, where he plays a dissonant version of the song he had earlier been composing. Turning around, he sees the prior and other monks gathered and envisions them as primitive grosteque figures about to attack him, and he collapses. Juan rushes to him and holds his former friend as Javier dies. The last image is of a cross above the door, suggesting some redemption. Cast Víctor Urruchúa as Juan Carlos Villatoro as Javier Magda Haller as Ana Beltrán de Heredia as Prior Emma Roldán as Gertrudis Reception In 2020 Two Monks was added to the Criterion Collection, spine #1048. Its visual style was compared to German Expressionism by Criterion, who praised it as "vividly stylized, broodingly intense." Charles Ramírez Berg called it an "existential mystery […] a brooding meditation on why things happened the way they did and an inconclusive inquiry into whether they could have happened some other way." The use of flashbacks giving contradictory accounts of the same event has been compared to Rashomon (1950), which Two Monks preceded by 16 years. On the other hand, Carl J. Mora dismissed it as a "timid experiment" in his Mexican Films: A General History, 1896-1976 (1981). References External links Dos monjes: Expressionism a la Mexicana an essay by Elisa Lozano at the Criterion Collection 1934 drama films Mexican horror drama films 1930s Spanish-language films Films directed by Juan Bustillo Oro