Sightlines · reception

How Castle of Purity was received

1973 · Arturo Ripstein · Castle of Purity on Sightlines

The arc

A landmark on arrival — it announced Ripstein as a major voice in early-70s Mexican cinema — and it has only climbed since, now routinely ranked among the greatest Mexican films ever made and rediscovered abroad through restorations and streaming.

What’s debated

The perennial fan debate: is this 'Dogtooth before Dogtooth'? — Letterboxd reviews endlessly relitigate how much Lanthimos's premise owes to Ripstein's film, made 36 years earlier.

Its footprint

Its scenario — a patriarch sealing his family off from a 'corrupting' world — has become the reference point for a whole lineage of locked-house cinema, so the film mostly circulates now as the thing people cite when they want to out-hipster a Dogtooth fan.

Where it stands

A canonical Mexican classic that plays as a cult discovery for everyone else — the archetypal 'why did nobody tell me about this' Letterboxd find.

Did you know? It's based on a real Mexico City case: a father who kept his wife and children locked inside their house for years while the family made rat poison to sell — and the screenplay was co-written with José Emilio Pacheco, one of Mexico's most celebrated poets.