June has turned me into a movie-watching MACHINE. I've watched twice my monthly goal and I still have two days left to go.
...That's right. I think I'm going to watch even more than EIGHT movies in one month.
I am THAT awesome.
There are many reasons for my sudden onset in film consumption success. An inexhaustive list:
--A super-awesome event at what is quickly becoming one of my favorite museums ever;
--Multiple completed movie dates with Boyfriend;
--And (currently) a brief period of convalescence post-minor surgery, which limits my activity to napping, eating, and watching Netflix (tragically).
As an aside, another fringe benefit of invalidity is that your family sends you flowers. Moderate physical discomfort and minor associated indignities aside, it's a pretty sweet deal.
Anyway. As previously mentioned, I'm excited to talk about many of the movies I've watched during the past month, so without further ado, let's do that.
One of the films I saw after aforementioned event at aforementioned fabulous museum was "Los Muertos" (2004), by Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso. It's one of the most riveting movies I've seen in a while, and as such, I gave it a 5.
The movie follows Vargas (played by Argentino Vargas), a vital but weathered-looking man, through the last two days of a long incarceration and his subsequent first two days of freedom. Much of the film is comprised of his journey out of the prison and ultimately to his adult daughter's encampment deep in the jungle. He is ferried to a nearby town in the back of a beat-up pick-up truck where he gathers meager supplies, then embarks on a solo canoe voyage down a long, lonely river in search of his final destination.
In terms of dialogue, this is an incredibly minimalist film. However, for what it withholds in language, "Los Muertos" pays out tenfold in breathtaking imagery. The film is so deliciously immersive it feels as if you've experienced more of rural Argentinian life than any typical travelogue could hope to impart. And so, with the aim of stoking interest in what seems to be a rarely-viewed movie in the States, I'll share some of the most striking impressions made upon me by this remarkable film.
Vargas enjoys the support of his fellow man over and over throughout "Los Muertos". He is offered refreshments and food, often shared directly out of the same bottle from which a stranger just drank. In what appears to be a resource-limited environment, people in the film tacitly acknowledge that interdependence is necessary for survival. Sharing of resources is therefore engaged in as a matter of course, giving the sense that even after years of jail time, Vargas is a welcomed brother to all he encounters.
With very few exceptions, no objects featured in the film seem new. From the pick-up that deposits him in town and the canoe he rows to his daughter's home, to the clothes people wear and the suitcase Vargas carries, everything seems as if it's seen decades of use. While this further emphasizes the poverty people endure in many other parts of the world, it also (for me, at least) shined an uncomfortable light upon the worship of novelty in my own culture. While life is by no means easy in the part of the world portrayed in "Los Muertos", the film nevertheless made it uncomfortably clear that the life to which I am accustomed as a relatively lucky American is painless and indulged in a way that feels, while being confronted with the destitution in which countless people all over the world live, pretty shameful.
The film does not, however, portray its characters as defenseless against circumstance. Quite to the contrary. In fact, the most radically entrancing chapters of the movie are those in which Vargas (and later, his grandson) exhibits finely-honed, extremely effective skills for survival. At one point, he lands his canoe on the side of the river. Walking a short distance into the jungle, in one continuous shot, he locates a tree with an active bee colony, lights a small fire, blows the smoke into the hive, and pulls out massive chunks of honeycomb for a meal. The following shot shows him popping a chunk of wax and honey into his mouth, chewing on it, and spitting it out seconds later to replace it with a new chunk as he continues down the river in his canoe. In another example, shortly before Vargas finds his daughter's home, we watch his grandson as he pokes through the jungle, hacking at underbrush with a machete to maintain a path to the river. Wanting a snack, he deftly climbs a tree, alights upon a stable branch, selects a ripe hanging fruit, pries is open, and commences what looks like a delicious meal with ease rivaling his grandfather's.
Finally, in what is at once a shocking but also riveting sequence, Vargas spots a goat on the riverbank. Again, in an uncut shot, he wrangles the goat into his canoe, slashes its throat with a large knife, bleeds it out, skins it, and removes its innards, saving it to bring to his daughter's encampment as a gift. Normally I wouldn't be able to tolerate such a frank portrayal of "where dinner comes from", but when I started to avert my eyes during this sequence, I stopped myself. Vargas is so dispassionate in his survivalism that it roots the viewer in the present with equal dispassion. I found myself so engrossed in what I was watching that there wasn't really room in my brain to get into an "ew gross" and "poor goatie" tizzy. After all, the man has to eat, and it's clear that not a shred of that animal was going to waste.
Part of what makes the imagery of "Los Muertos" so effective is the incredible skill with which the camera was utilized in its making. Early in his canoe travels, a long shot shows Vargas as he slowly makes his way down the river. He is held in the center of the screen, floating along for what seems like an eternity, as the loneliness and length of the trip ahead of him sinks in. The sequence in which Vargas's grandson scales the fruit tree is even more remarkable in that it is, like so many others, continuous. In a beautiful and yet self-effacing feat of cinema, the camera scales the height of the tree as readily as the boy. These shots appear captured with such ease that the camera melts into the farthest reaches of your consciousness. Without this unimpeachable competency in filmmaking, "Los Muertos" would be nowhere near as powerful.
Mirroring the beautiful camerawork, there is an effortlessness and fluidity to the acts of survival in this movie that is simply breathtaking. The characters executing them show a mastery of and comfort with their environment and the activities necessary to gather sustenance that is, honestly, completely foreign to me. Again, the film forced me to consider how sanitized and disconnected from nature my daily life is.
I'm not sure exactly where these reflections lead me. You may be disappointed to learn that I don't have any impending plans to give up grad school, move to the jungle, and learn how to slaughter goats with nothing but a knife and my bare hands. But it nevertheless feels important to be reminded of the myriad other ways people inhabit this planet. In some small but hopefully enduring way, I feel that "Los Muertos" helped free me of the materialism that is so entrenched in American culture. It jarred me enough to make me just the tiniest bit more mindful of what I really do need, and perhaps the tiniest bit more grateful for the many luxuries I regularly enjoy, often without even noticing them.
Any movie that can accomplish that is pretty spectacular.
With that... bedtime.
<3
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