195. Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s “El abrazo de la serpiente” (Embrace of the Serpent) (2015) (Colombia/Argentina/Venezuela): An amazing film with deep insights on nature and civilization dedicated to “peoples whose song we will never know.”

Both posters above are predominantly in black and white,
while colour is utilized sparingly and effectively,
 as in the film

“The display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in a language that allows others to understand its beauty and splendour; all I know is that, like all those who have shed the thick veil that blinded them, when I came back to my senses, I had become another man.” ---German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg’s (1872-1924) writings, quoted at the opening of the film

The year 2015 witnessed the release of three outstanding films from South American countries: Land and Shade from Colombia, The Pearl Button from Chile, and Embrace of the Serpent a co-production from Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Each of the three films deals with history and economics. Each film present a combination of fact and fiction, the last two blending history with actors playing fictional roles that have some facts to rely on. Each of the films provide the viewer an unsettling perspective of reality that you rarely encounter in cinema these days. Each of these three is an artistic work that will satisfy a sensitive viewer who is looking for entertainment without sex, violence, and escapist action. All three films are bolstered by outstanding cinematography, direction, and incredibly mature performances by little known actors that can make big Hollywood names pale in comparison. And more importantly, these films have been made for a fraction of the cost of an average Hollywood film.

First journey: Koch-Grunberg (Bijvoet), Manduca, and young Karamakate,
with material possessions, including a phonograph

Embrace of the Serpent is a tale of two scientists/explorers: the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) (played by Jan Bijvoet of Borgman) and the American Richard Evan Schultes (1915-2001) (played by Brionne Davis of Avenged). Both men were seeking a medicinal flower “yakruna” from a native shaman Karamakate (played by Nibio Torres, when young, and Antonio Bolivar, when old), who lives on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries. 

There is a 20-30 year gap (1909 to 1940) between the two encounters of Karamakate and the two explorers from the developed world. Koch-Grunberg was an ethnographer who had fallen ill while studying the Pemon natives of Venezuela and is brought to the shaman Karamakate, who knows about yakruna and where it can be found. This flower Koch-Grunberg had been told could cure the sick explorer. Karamakate distrusts Koch-Grunberg and Manduca, Koch-Grunberg’s native companion and recently freed slave. Karamakate refuses money as he takes the German and Manduca to Colombia along the Amazon only to find Colombian soldiers misusing the plant as an hallucinatory drug and growing it in untraditional ways for profit and drug abuse. The drugged soldiers and the plants are destroyed by the enraged young Karamakate. Koch-Grunberg is thus not cured and dies even though he is sustained for a while by Karamakate blowing a hallucinogenic powder up his nostril. However, Koch-Grunberg’s detailed notes of his trip with young Karamakate and the yakruna that he saw before the plants were destroyed, survive his passing. 

Second journey: American Richrd Evan Schultes (Davis) and the older
Karamakate (Bolivar), reach where the last yakruna grows

Decades later, the American scientist Richard Evan Schultes, having read the detailed notes of Koch-Grunberg, locates Karamakate, now much older and possibly with memory fading (or at least affecting to fade) and less temperamental than in his youth. The American is also searching for yakruna for commercial reasons because the genetic resource of the flower’s seeds can apparently make rubber trees disease-free adding to the profits of the global rubber industry chain, from forests to factory. Old crafty Karmakate shows him the last yakruna flower and cleverly cooks it for Schultes. The outcome shown in Embrace of the Serpent is, to say the least, fascinating. 

What is the serpent in the title of the film? It is the Amazon. The Amazon does look like an anaconda when viewed from the sky. It appears as a massive snake that populates the Amazon banks and the director cleverly shows the birth of young anacondas early in the film. To add to the visual suggestion, there is a clever line in the script that states the natives believe the snake came from the skies. (This is not far removed from similar analogies within the traditional beliefs of natives of Chile in The Pearl Button.) 

Two aspects of this important film stand out for any viewer. The two native actors who play Karamakate overshadow the performances of professional western actors in this film. The credit not only goes to the native actors but to the script of director and co-scriptwriter Ciro Guerra, co-scriptwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and the cinematographer David Gallego. One has to admit considerable fiction has been enmeshed with the two historical trips on the Amazon river separated in time by some three decades. 

The young impetuous Karamakate (Torres) with the Amazon behind him

The second aspect of the film is the deliberate choice of the director Ciro Guerra to make Embrace of the Serpent in black and white (cinematographer David Gallego) for most parts. [This deliberate choice needs to be compared with a few other important films on evil/distrust and reconciliation deliberately made in black and white with superb outcomes: Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009)—all cinematic works with reflective depth and common concerns which would have had lesser impact were they made in lush colour.] It is possible that a colour version of the film Embrace of the Serpent would have emphasized the wrong elements of the tale—the formidable river and the overarching rain forests. The pivotal aspect of the film is the traditional world of the natives and their knowledge of traditional medicine orally handed over generations and kept protected from commercial misuse. When colour is used briefly by the filmmakers in Embrace of the Serpent, it is to communicate this wisdom. It is not surprising that several reviewers have noticed the parallels between Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Embrace of the Serpent. Science/scientific knowledge (here, specifically the commercial production of rare plants and genetic resources) and accumulated human wisdom are weighed against each other in both the cinematic works. Somewhere in the film Karamakate says, “Every tree, every flower brings wisdom.” The endings of both films, their release separated by half a century, will humble a reflective viewer. 

Embrace of the Serpent provides much food for thought. The journeys on the river have parallels with Homer’s tale of Ulysses voyage. In Ciro Guerra’s film, there are three major ports/stops during the river voyage. The first is a native village on the banks of the river. There is a peaceful exchange of knowledge and understanding of each other’s cultures. The natives listen to European classical music from a phonograph of Koch-Grunberg. Koch-Grunberg and Manduca dance to German music of Haydn and Handel and entertain the natives who end up stealing his compass. Koch-Grunberg is upset that his only scientific aid for navigation is lost. Karamakate sagaciously drills reason into the mind of the upset German, ironically reminding the scientist “Knowledge belongs to all. You do not understand that. You are just a white man.” Even the natives need to learn from the developed nations, the shaman appears to assert. Ironically, we learn in the film that shamans such as Karamakate were almost wiped out by the colonizers. One reason for Karamakate to agree taking Schultes on the second voyage on the river is to connect with those remnants of his tribe that had shamans. 

At the religious settlement, the trio treads with care 

The second stop is at a religious settlement run by fanatic Roman Catholic monks who brutally inculcate Christianity in the minds of innocent native kids obliterating any respect they had for traditional wisdom. The monks seem totally oblivious of the virtue of translating Christ’s pacifist teachings in real life. Karamakate, Koch-Grunberg and Manduca try to help free the native kids from the priests' influence. The freed native kids are ironically later found some 30 years later by Karamakate and Schulte as grown-up twisted Christians who have interpreted religion in a bizarre manner, taking to idolatry and cannibalism. The effect of Roman Catholic monks on the natives during the colonization period is dealt in a parallel manner in both Embrace of the Serpent and The Pearl Button. 

The final decision for the old Karamkate comes from his environment
and wisdom that he has acquired over time

The third stop in both voyages is where the yakruna flower grows. Karamakate’s reactions are different each time. It is important to note that yakruna is a plant that can heal, symbolic of the independence of the natives. And it grows on rubber trees! But commercial compulsions of the developed world always lead to loss of independence of the natives. A rubber slave pleads for death as the rubber sap pail he had nailed to a rubber tree has been emptied and he will have to face brutal consequences from his masters. It is therefore not surprising that Karamakate’s constant refrain to both explorers is to unburden themselves of their material possessions.

Embrace of the Serpent constantly pits personal material possessions against collective traditional memories. The old Karamakate says, “To become warriors, the cohiuanos must abandon all and go alone to the jungle, guided only by their dreams. In this journey, he has to find out, in solitude and silence, who he really is. He must become a wanderer and dream. Many are lost, and some never return. But those who return they are ready to face what is to come.“ The film is unusual in many respects. In the film nine languages are spoken including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Latin and four aboriginal Amazonian languages. 

Secondly, women are almost peripheral in the film for reasons best known to the filmmkers alone.

Then, the film touches on the resources of the river itself—the fish. Karamakate specifically warns the scientist Koch-Grunberg not to fish during a particular period (possibly its breeding period to preserve its numbers) but the German does not listen and answers, “The river is full of fishes. We cannot possibly end them.” Today, oceans and rivers are rapidly losing the rich fish species and their diversity by mindless over-fishing.

Finally, there is the contrast of the messages in dreams presented in Embrace of the Serpent —the anaconda suggests that Karamakate kill the scientist Theo, the jaguar suggest the opposite. The two dreams distil the quandary of the film for the viewer—science vs human wisdom. The final action of old Karamakate before he disappears seems to reconcile the jaguar’s view and the shaman’s accumulated wisdom. The American explorer Schultes is cured of his insomnia, he can dream, and is now a changed human being. In a parallel Kubrick moment, he is at home with butterflies!

P.S. Embrace of the Serpent won the Golden Peacock at the 2015 Indian International Film Festival in Goa; the Art cinema award at the Cannes film festival; the Golden Apricot at the Yerevan film festival (Armenia); the Golden Astor at the Mar del Plata international film festival; and the Alfred P. Sloan prize at the Sundance film festival. The film is in myriad ways superior to the Hungarian film Son of Saul, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar while Embrace of the Serpent lost to the Hungarian challenge after both were final nominees for the award. All three films Land and Shade (Colombia), The Pearl Button (Chile), and Embrace of the Serpent (all released in 2015) are on the author’s top 10 films list for that year and have been separately reviewed in detail on this blog. Another film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) mentioned in the above review is also reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

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172. Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s “Wild Tales” (Relatos salvajes) (2014): Black comedy that entertains while making us introspect

The "wild" characters from the six segments

Wild Tales is a gem of an entertainer made up of six stand-alone, dark, comic tales. It is a portmanteau film with a difference; all the six tales are written and directed by one man--Damián Szifrón.  He is also the co-editor of this impressive work. Surprisingly, this Argentine director is only in his late thirties and he has made a film that belies his age. Most audiences will love it because there are elements in the six tales they will easily identify with, irrespective of where they live on this planet.  Interestingly, the film was co-produced by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, who must be delighted that he has invested his money well.

It is “wild” because it depicts extreme reactions of ordinary individuals, who are frustrated by present urban societal pressures and the outcomes are quite plausible if the frustrated individuals are left with little or no choice to correct their predicaments, created often not by themselves but by others. Damián Szifrón may be zooming in on frustrations in urban Argentina but a global viewer would easily identify the situations as universal.

"Pasternak": Wild revenge of a snubbed creative mind

The opening segment “Pasternak” is a prologue to the main film before you see the film’s credits hilarious credit sequence. The prologue is essential for the viewer to appreciate the comic elements in the illustrated animals shown in the credits.  The humans in the film Wild Tales are not far removed from the colorful wild animals in the credit sequence. The humans are ordinary people who can indeed become wild.

Without providing spoilers for those who are yet to enjoy the film, it is important to note ’’Pasternak” is a tale relating to the frustrations of a budding music composer named Pasternak, who finds his creative output is trashed by critics/professors and his life is gradually ripped apart by several people in his life. And the brilliant part of this segment is that you never get to see Mr Pasternak—you only get to see those who have ruined him.

"The Rats:" How to deal with rats in a restaurant 

The next segment “The Rats” is set in a restaurant but the rodents are human.  The human rat is a social climber who has succeeded in life by trampling down on poorer sections of society, often wrecking their lives with impunity and killing the bread winners of marginal lower middle class families who cannot survive the economic pressures.  This segment also presents the flip side view of lower middle class family members driven to prison for offences created by economic strains and eventually preferring to remain behind bars with basic food and amenities rather than succumb to “human” rodents who wreck your life outside prison.

"The Strongest": Class wars on the road

The segment “The Strongest” is all about road rage of two individuals with a difference. Director-writer Damián Szifrón adds the element of social economic disparity—one is driving a high-end car, the other a jalopy, both using the same highway.  The rich look at the slow moving jalopy refusing to give way for fast moving cars with disdain. The poor look to avenge the cocky rich. Who is stronger? The best part is the finale of the segment where the policeman makes an ironical statement. Kudos to the writer Damián Szifrón! The audience anywhere will erupt when they hear that line. (This critic is intentionally not reproducing it as it would be spoiler!)

"Little Bomb": The expert demolisher (Ricardo Darin) demolished

Argentine actor Ricardo Darin is impressive in every role in every film that this critic recalls having seen him in and the segment “Little Bomb” in Wild Tales is no exception. Ricardo Darin plays a well-paid demolition expert, married and a father of a lovely girl. His well heeled life is slowly demolished by a private sector Buenos Aires traffic entity responsible for ensuring cars are parked only in designated places and having the authority to tow away those that do not comply to the rules.

But such entities can get high handed and citizens can get high strung, if they are convinced that they did not break any rules but have option but to pay the large fines. This segment also reveals writer Damián Szifrón’s empathy for the parking woes of car owners in Buenos Aires and how a “terrorist” can become a local hero. Damián Szifrón’s characters here and elsewhere act and react as ordinary individuals driven up against the wall by forces un-intentionally created by a well-meaning society.

The segment “The Proposal” reiterates Damián Szifrón’s interest in the class divide and how the rich try to use the poor to get out of nasty situations such as a rich family member causing a car accident leading to a death of a poor citizen.  As in the earlier segment “The Rats,” Szifrón’s script deals with corruption but in “The Proposal” that aspect is openly shown with amazing humor. The black comedy takes a U-turn when the righteous, scarred public avenges by “wildly” killing the wrong person.

"Till Death Do Us Part": The bride confirms the bridegroom's infidelity

The final segment titled “Till Death Do Us Part”—the famous wedding phrase used in Christian weddings--is about a wedding reception for the newlyweds in a hotel in Buenos Aires.  The bride stumbles on a hidden relationship the bridegroom has with one of the invited guests and what follows is best described by Shakespeare’s words “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” The resulting “wild” roller coaster events during the wedding reception constitute black comedy, sinister and yet hilarious.

While we laugh at all the six segments, there are pointers from the film to take home. Can critics destroy creative minds? Can the upwardly mobile successful citizens realize who they have trampled along the way? Can we project our road rage towards people who are indeed breaking rules without considering the consequences? Can the private and public sector perform with a heart towards society? Can public rage against corruption and the wrongdoings of the rich go sadly wrong?  Can spouses who fall deeply in love forgive each other’s weaknesses?

Wild Tales is a combination of intelligent original screenplay writing and good direction. This wild film is a social critique of Argentina today, entertaining the audiences in its stride. Intelligent comedy is not easy; Wild Tales makes it look easy. The numerous audience awards it has picked up at film festivals globally testify to its universal appeal and for Argentine cinema, rare indeed is a film that has won a staggering tally of 15 national awards. Damián Szifrón has arrived on the world cinema map.

P.S. Wild Tales  has won audience awards at the San Sebastian film festival, the Sao Paulo film festival, the Sarajevo film festival, and the Oslo Films of the South film festival. Its box office returns have already exceeded 7 times its production cost. It is one of the 5 films that made the final  list of nominees for the Best Foreign Film Oscar 2015 but did not win it. Wild Tales is one of the author's top 10 films of 2014.

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157. Chilean director Sebastián Sepúlveda’s debut film “Las niñas Quispe” (The Quispe Girls/Sisters Quispe) (2013): Distant drums of politics affecting lives of the isolated denizens

Debut films very often offer interesting cinema as every new director distills his/her individual vision of cinema to a global audience. Sebastián Sepúlveda’s debut film The Quispe Girls is one such example of a director presenting a complex tale with very little dialog, relying more on capturing emotions of faces and body movements set against a breathtaking natural backdrop rarely viewed.

The Quispe Girls is a beautiful film that offers a mix of emotions that film-goers will recall in three distinctly different films, each one a classic of world cinema: the Greek director Mihalis Kakogiannis’ (popularly referred to as Michael Cacoyannis’) The Trojan Women (1971); the Bulgarian classic The Goat Horn (1972) directed by Metodi Andonov; and the little known Iranian classic Water, Wind, Dust (1989) directed by the talented Amir Naderi in Iran before he left to work in USA. The Quispe Girls adopts the tragic political flavor of the Greek film, the atmospherics of the hard lives of goat herds worldwide captured in the Bulgarian film, and the effect of desolate inhospitable terrains on human lives captured by the Iranian film. Therefore, viewing The Quispe Girls is as rich an experience as viewing all the three movies cited above.

The Quispe sisters Lucia. Justa (played by Digna Quispe, a close relative
of the real characters) and Luciana

The importance of The Quispe Girls stems from Sebastián Sepúlveda’s ability to capture the harsh and yet beautiful environment of Chilean Andean ‘altiplano’, the world’s second highest mountain plateau after Tibet, and transpose the conditions as a factor that could have a bearing on the tragic end of three middle aged unmarried women goatherds. The politics of the day (General Pinochet’s dictatorship) also need to be savored as the backdrop to their actions and worldly and existential worries through snatches of conversations between three sisters. It appears that the dictator, partially out of fear of political opponents, partially to conserve the national ecology, and partially to modernize goat husbandry decreed that goats grazing on the altiplano had to be killed as the sparse vegetation was being gradually destroyed. The decree made it impossible for the goatherds to survive in the fringe Chiliean territories while it also reduced the chances of harboring Pinochet’s opponents on the run from hiding in these otherwise remote inhospitable places and make explosives in the guise of mining rocks.

The title of the movie The Quispe Girls relates to three indigenous Chilean women in their thirties who existed and died mysteriously and made headlines in Chile’s print media. There were four Quispe sisters originally and one had already died when the movie begins leaving the viewers of film to merely study the lives of three remaining Quispe sisters Justa, Lucia, and Luciana to make up the narrative of the film. Adding to the mystery of their existence is the fact there are no Quispe men or boys in the tale and no mention is made of their deaths/lives. Where are they? How did they die or disappear?  There are no clues provided.

Possibly to counter this unusual scenario, director Sepúlveda is able to bring additional authenticity to the film by getting a close relative (Digna Quispe) of the real Quispe trio and the last human being to see them alive, to play one of the sisters, Justa, in the film. And just as in Euripides’ play The Trojan Women (written in 415 BC) which was the basis of the Cacoyannis’ film, which discusses Cassandra who had had been raped and subsequently becomes insane. In The Quispe Girls, Justa the eldest of the three Quispe sisters too had been raped at age of 17 and consequently the effect of that distant incident leave the three sisters wary of men even though the youngest sister Luciana yearns for men’s company and wears attractive clothes to attract suitors, real or imaginary. The eldest sister, Justa, chides Luciana by asking her after noticing her wearing an off-white dress “Why are you dressing like that when you are going to make charcoal?” Just as the Cacoyannis’ film was based on the Euripides’ play, Sepulveda’s film The Quispe Girls is the director’s own screenplay adaptation of a Chilean play Las Brutas by Juan Radrigan. As in any play, the spoken words are loaded with meaning and insinuations.

Chile's Andean altiplano in light and shade as captured by the
camera of Inti Briones

Unlike the tale of the Trojan women, the Quispe girls live in a desolate area where they come across men only on rare occasions. In the film there are only two men who interact with the three middle-aged women. One man of the two men is a peddler of clothes and bare essential s and  is identified as Don Javier—who is attracted to Luciana, the youngest sister.  Justa, the eldest sister, notices this and warns the man to stay away from her sister—her rape has made her intensely distrustful of men. The only other interaction in the film of the sister is with another man, a stranger (possibly a Pinochet opponent) named Fernando who is seeking food and directions to flee the country to neighboring Argentina by crossing the altiplano. The sisters help him but tie a quixotic rope with bells close to their makeshift beds to provide an alarm if the man tries to rape or seduce any of them while they sleep.

The remoteness of the location is accentuated by a sister’s statement in the film “There is no one anywhere. They have all gone.” Apparently the only connection with humans was other goat herders, who have apparently left as a consequence of the new “progressive” edict by Pinochet. However, in the film, when Luciana, is found near a rocky spring lying on the ground, apparently sick, the camera captures a group of animals/people leaving in a single file disappearing in the distance. If the people “had all gone” what can one make of a group of people/animals moving in a single file. Do animals move in a single file on their own? The consequent sequence of sickness of Luciana leave a lot of questions unanswered of what really transpired that makes one recall yet another classic film—the Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) directed by Peter Weir, based on a novel written by novelist Lady Joan Lindsay, who enigmatically never confirmed or denied that her story was based on or inspired by real events. In The Quispe Girls,  too, it is for the viewer to guess what actually happened and what Sepulveda wishes us to believe happened to the three women at various crucial stages in the tale.

Luciana Quispe (Francisca Gavilán) and the unexplained single file of moving
humans/animals(in the center of the picture) in the distance,
if there is "no one here anyway"

The film is thus an instance of a male director giving us the perspective of lives of three women who seem to survive in a world where men are not to be trusted.  The press kit provided a at the Venice film festival mentions the term “feminist austerity” captured by the film—terms that possibly come close to the mood of the film. From the conversation of the three Quispe girls, we learn that the youngest and the most attractive sister Luciana was ridiculed by townsfolk for her lack of sophistication where they had gone to get their identity cards (shown briefly by the director towards the end of the film). Evidently, they cannot integrate with the more sophisticated townsfolk and there is impending gloom of Pinochet’s forces culling their precious goats leaving them with few options to survive. So far the goat herds survived by selling sheep and goat cheese and living in stone “rucas” or huts the goat herders lived in. The filmmakers state that the ruca shown in the film was the very ‘ruca’ the Quispe sisters lived in towards the end of their lives.

The real ruca (stone hut) in which the Quispe sisters lived is used in the film

Sepúlveda’s film goes a step further to make the film viewing richer.  With the help of two professional actresses playing Lucia and Luciana, as the film progresses the three sisters do begin to look and act alike. The cinematographer Inti Briones and the director uses the dust kicked up by the herd help in this unusual amalgamation of the three characters reminiscent of how Cacoyannis managed to merge the performances of Katherine Hepburn, Irene Papas, Genevieve Bujold and Irene Papas (four distinguished actors from four different countries) to seem like one single woman’s anguished universal cry in the The Trojan Women. The visuals of The Quispe Girls, reminiscent of the sound and visuals of Naderi’s Water, Wind, Dust accentuate the role that hostile nature plays in the actions of human beings. The magical world of goat herders captured in color in The Quispe Girls is as lovely as the lovely black and white images captured in the Bulgarian classic film The Goat Horn.

A strange man named Fernando arrives seeking food, shelter and directions
to the Argentine border

While we enjoy the film’s use of sound and enigmatic visuals of Chile’s altiplano, The Quispe Girls throws a lot of inconvenient questions at the viewers, social, political, and environmental. These questions are not peculiar to Chile in 1974. These questions are globally valid today. It is a very well made film that makes the viewer appreciate the direction, the cinematography, the sound editing, and the acting. Young Sepúlveda has arrived on the center stage of world cinema with a remarkable debut film.

The cinema of Chile has made an impact on the map of world cinema in 2013 with two notable works: The Quispe Girls and Gloria.

P.S. The Quispe Girls is the second best film of 2013 for the author on his list of his top 10 movies of 2013. The film won the Fedora award for best cinematography at the 2013 Venice film festival's critics week. Amir Naderi's film Water, Wind, Dust (1989) has been reviewed earlier on this blog.

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148. Argentine director Juan José Campanella’s “El secreto de sus Ojos” (The Secret in Their Eyes) (2009): Closing of open doors and revealing tales through the eyes, underscoring a visual element one often takes for granted

Viewers of this Oscar-winning Argentinean film are likely to enjoy the experience for varied reasons. It is definitely an engaging thriller with loads of subtle humor.  It is therefore not surprising that the film was a commercial and critical success in the country of its origin, Argentina. The best foreign film Oscar, the second for Argentina over the years, bestowed on the film would have boosted its popularity at home even further. However, the film can be enjoyed by non-Argentinean audiences as well for several additional elements beyond the obvious thrilling tale the film unfolds.

The film is at a basic level a detective story of tracking down a rapist and killer and ensuring that he gets a fitting punishment for the crime. At a more complex level, it is a tale of love of two sets of couples and a strong camaraderie of two detective colleagues. And finally, the screenplay captures the mood of Argentina’s “dirty war” period from 1976 to 1983 (during which tale is set) when criminals held sway and at least 15000 social activists ‘disappeared’ and often social status provided a sense of security for a privileged few (such as the Cornell-educated Hastings in the movie) when compared to lesser mortals (such as the investigating officer Benjamin Esposito in the movie). The indirect connection to the "dirty war" is established briefly with the TV news item watched by three pivotal characters in the movie that shows Isabel Peron morphed with the rapist/killer as her bodyguard/security staff.

The remarkable screenplay of the film, an adaptation of a book written by Eduardo Sacheri, is by both the author Sacheri and the film’s Argentinean director Juan José Campanella. The screenplay uses the power of cinema to elevate the tale of the book to an even more sophisticated level.

Campanella, for those unfamiliar with his work, is an engaging and creative screenplay writer. For instance, Campanella’s 2001 film The Son of the Bride, another delightful Argentinean film that made the final nominee list for the best foreign film Oscar that year, had the lead character muttering away that he is “no Albert Einstein, a Bill Gates or a Dick Watson” making all viewers wonder who on earth was this Dick Watson. At the end of the film, when the end-credits are rolling, the movie humorously reveals that this mysterious Dick Watson is a character from a pornographic film. Campanella carries forward his unusual penchant for juggling non-chronologically images and incidents in The Secret in Their Eyes that add to a diligent viewer’s entertainment. For instance, the movie begins with shots of Judge Hasting’s and Investigator Esposito’s eyes and shots of the railway station in Buenos Aires which are only fleshed out much later halfway into the movie. Campanella is apparently reinforcing two important strands that continue throughout the duration of The Secret in Their Eyes: the importance of eyes so pivotal in the film and the development of the plot; and the importance of railway stations as a key location for both the two parallel love stories and the detective story in the film. And both deal with memories, something the script reminds us is “all that we end up with.”

Campanella and Sacheri had devised a cute devise to capture the mood of Argentina to be weaved into the film. Judge Hastings (Soledad Villamil) hands Investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) a typewriter which cannot type the alphabet “A”. Much later in the film the retired investigator Esposito, while writing a book on the case is shown waking up from a disturbed sleep and scribbling the word  TEMO(‘I fear’). He knows and is afraid that he could be knocked off by the killer-cum-rapist who is out on the loose and is seeking revenge for being briefly arrested by him.  Towards the end of the film, Esposito adds the alphabet “A” to TEMOto transform the scribble to TEAMO (‘I love you’). Campanella and Sacheri again prove the importance of a script that appears initially disconnected but  is all tied up eventually.

Temo to Teamo: From 'Fear' to 'Love', with an alphabet added

Similarly, throughout the film Judge Hastings wonders if she ought to close the door of her office.  The viewer would assume that it had something to do with the latent love affair between Hastings and Esposito that Hastings did not want her office staff to hear. But is it only that? It was a time when everybody seemed to be snooping on each other and the closing of doors became imperative for all important discussions. Take the sequence when Esposito and his dear colleague go snooping into a house of the suspect’s mother. The streets are empty. Yet there were people taking note of the car,its registration number, and what they were up to. The tale is set in a period when everyone was snooping on each other in Argentina.

And later on, Esposito’s rival colleague berates Esposito in front of Hastings that he is a nobody on the social ladder, minutes before the spine chilling encounter in the lift with the rapist-cum-killer loading his gun to send a message to both Esposito and Hastings. It is a sign of the terror most Argentinians had encountered, irrespective of their social status, during the 'dirty war' years.

The message of terror in Argentina during the Dirty War years

Campanella is a delightful scriptwriter. He has proved it time and again with two marvelous films: The Son of the Bride and The Secret in Their Eyes. In both films, he was aided by the marvelous thespian Ricardo Darin, who exudes magnetic charm in each role, film after film. And Campanella  has a magical touch with his actors Darin and Ms. Villamil not just in The Secret in Their Eyes but in an earlier work Same Love, Same Rain (1999). In all the three films, Campanella shows that he can elicit great performances from all his actors and he has a magic touch with script-writing. The viewers are not likely to forget the line “the gates of heaven have opened’’muttered by the males time and again as they encounter any beautiful woman in The Secret in Their Eyes.

However, Sacheri and Campanella, through this film, have raised the issue of crime and punishment of rapist-killers worldwide. The punishment suggested by the filmmakers is thought-provoking. The contents of the film will make the viewer think about corruption and the consequences of lenient punishments accorded to such criminals.

But is Campanella the director, the best filmmaker to come out of Argentina in recent years? This critic considers the late Fabián Bielinsky, who made just two feature films The Aura (2005) and Nine Queens (2000) (both with Ricardo Darin in the lead roles), before he passed away prematurely in 2006 to be head and shoulders above Campanella as a director. The two Bielinsky films had a maturity that should make Argentinean cinema proud of raising the bar of quality though it is Campanella, who eventually brought home the Oscar statuette.

P.S. The late Fabián Bielinsky’s The Aura was reviewed earlier on this blog.

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104. The late Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky’s “El Aura” (The Aura) (2005): A mind–bending thriller that takes you beyond guns, women and lucre

Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky (1959-2006) died months after making The Aura following a heart attack at the age of 47. The Aura was his second feature film. His first feature film was Nine Queens. Incredibly, the two feature films together have picked up at least 30 awards worldwide.


If Bielinsky were alive and making movies, he could well have been the toast of cineastes today. But most of all, Bielinsky’s two movie career is unusual because both films were based his own original screenplays, not a mere adaptation of a novel, story, or play and not even based on actual events. I stumbled on these two interesting films at a minor film festival amongst some 50 odd international films on show, organized in Trivandrum, India, the organizers of which did not realize what they had inadvertently accomplished! They were showing a Bielinsky retrospective without trumpeting that fact.

While Nine Queens, the first feature film of Bielinsky, recalls the humour and thrills of the original The Italian Job (1969) with Michael Caine and Noel Coward that took a swipe at the emerging civic problem of traffic jams, Bielinsky’s script captured the cancer of Argentine societal malaise of scams with a twinkle in his eye. Here was a thriller that entertained not just Argentinean audiences but festival audiences worldwide, while it dissected the cadaver of the social maggots of Argentina on the sly. (The title, Nine Queens, refers to a set of rare stamps around which the film’s main plot revolves.)

The second Bielinsky film The Aura takes a quantum jump in sophistication of plot development, social criticism, riveting performances, and entertainment that makes films such as Memento look flashy and somewhat juvenile. Both the Bielinsky films have the incredibly talented Argentine actor Ricardo Darin, portraying characters that are distinctly different in moods and actions.

The Aura encourages the viewer to turn detective. Bielinsky begins and ends The Aura a psychological noir thriller, a caper, and a epileptic’s take on marriages (his own and another’s) sandwiched between two scenes of a talented taxidermist at work in his studio. Yes, the film is about an epileptic. An epileptic taxidermist, to be precise. What Bielinsky insinuates is that a taxidermist deals with the dead and makes the stuffed animals come alive for us who love to recall the fauna that habits or habited this planet. A taxidermist naturally has to observe the details of the animal or bird and, if possible, imagine their movements and looks, to make his products life-like for us to enjoy in a museum or home. And what if the taxidermist who is trained to work on noting details of life has the gift of a photographic memory to boot? Would such a talented individual be making a living, stuffing dead animal carcasses?

Bielinsky’s The Aura takes you on roller-coaster ride of an animal hunting expedition in the Patagonian forests, dead bodies, man and animal bonding, abuse of wives/women, wives leaving their husbands, thugs who kill for money, talented kids who can draw detailed pictures, and finally planning the perfect crime. Bielinsky’s script has a moralistic vein as well. Early in the film, there is mention of the epileptic taxidermist’s wife leaving him. Yet there is no rancour for the man towards the female species, he actually helps a woman flee a no-win situation of exploitation and fear. For Bielinsky’s complex script the bonding between dog and man is more stable and enduring than that of a man and a woman.

That epilepsy is central to the development of the plot is not without meaning. Bielinsky is not the first creative artist to find the subject useful to weave a great tale: Fyodor Dostoevesky (The Idiot) and Thomas Mann (Buddenbrooks) probably lit the path for Bielinsky to tread in this film. An epileptic fit becomes a useful point for the plot to use as reference to the past and future. Belinsky uses the event once early in the film and another much later in the film. And interestingly both events have diametrically opposing roles with time in relation to the plot development. The first event in front of a cash teller machine cannot be easily defined by time in relation to the plot, at least by the time the movie ends. The second event is more finite and seems to fit into the plot. But which is real and which is not? Is an epileptic fit a convenient moment of epiphany for creative novelists and scriptwriters?

Bielinsky does not limit the film to entertainment associated with a heist. Michael Mann’s Heat was a rare Hollywood movie that combined an action movie with complex character developments, marital relationships, and alter egos. Bielinsky’s film goes a step further than Michael Mann’s commendable effort. Bielinsky makes the viewer to rewind the images he has relished earlier in the film to figure out what was real and what was unreal. In fact, the delectable movie provides two distinct story lines parallel to each other. It is left to the viewer to figure out which was real. And you will realize that the director carefully leaves behind clues that could bolster either theory. That’s amazing cinema of a novel variety.

Bielinsky’s cinema seems to mirror the social fabric of Argentina, deliberately or unconsciously. While Nine Queens had looked at scams big and small, The Aura looks at taxidermy where the dead is made to look alive. Social analogies are inferred, though not stated. Crime and easy money seem to be omnipresent in his scripts, though critical of their power over the average citizen. The importance of the life-like eye in the stuffed animal goes beyond verisimilitude in this film. It is a metaphor that becomes evident as the film progresses.

To talk of the plot of The Aura will not do justice to this remarkable film. The bulwark of the film was the almost dead-pan yet sophisticated top notch performance by actor Ricardo Darin. His performance in this film, much superior to a very good one in Nine Queens, combines elements of a sick man, a very quick witted man, a very observant man, and a man who appreciates love and cannot bring himself to pull the trigger to kill even an animal. You think at times that Darin is portraying a dour, colourless character. Yet the ability of the thespian in combining several other aspects of the character without having to shout or cry, which an Al Pacino, Richard Burton or Marlon Brando would resort to, is nothing short of amazing. It is as much an actor’s film as it is a director’s film.

Similarly, several other facets of the film are extremely praiseworthy. One such facet is the music of Lucio Godoy that provides an excellent foil to build the mood as the plot develops. The director ensures that the lovely music does not occupy the centre stage at any point. The cinematography (Checco Varese) and the art direction (Mercedes Alfonsin) are elements that are so crucial in making the film so meaningful and complete. Each detail shown in the film provides clues for the viewer to decide which of the two equally radical options the film offers is to be chosen as the real tale.

At a stage when Argentine cinema is making waves having won the 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar for another Argentine film with Ricardo Darin titled The Secret in Their Eyes, the absence of Bielinsky is unfortunate. Had Bielinsky been alive today, world cinema would have been richer for it, especially as he seemed to be a director, like Krzysztof Kieslowski, rapidly honing his skills with each film.

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