by Allan Fish
(Argentina 2008 245m) not on DVD
Aka. Historias Extraordinarias
Knowing the rules
p Laura Citarella d/w Mariano Llinás ph Agustin Mendilaharzu ed Alejo Moguillansky, Agustin Rolandelli m Gabriel Chwojnik
Mariano Llinás (X), Agustin Mendilaharzu (H), Walter Jakob (Z), Klaus Dietze (Cesar), Eduardo Iaccono (Factorovich), Horacio Marassi (Saponara), Hector Diaz (Salamone), Ana Livingston (Lola Gallo), Oscar Mauregui (Orlando Rey), Hector Bordoni (Carlos Armas), Lenadro Ibarra (Salvador Armas), Edmundo Lavalle (Palomeque), Pilo Nelli (Oyarzun), Victoria Hladilo (Vecina), Alberto Suarez (Lola’s older lover), Lola Arias (Alicia), Mariana Chaud (Maria Luisa), Fernando Llosa (Cuevas), Daniel Handler, Juan Minujin, Veronica Llinas (narrators),
It’s with some devilish pleasure that one imagines Robert McKee shaking his head through this film, one which breaks his cardinal rule about avoiding narrations more blatantly than any other. There had been films before with virtually no dialogue and told entirely through narration, and some great ones, from Von Sternberg’s Anatahan back to Guitry’s Le Roman d’un Tricheur, and doubtless McKee would have poo-poohed both of those, too. And yet what are rules if they are not to be broken. Nothing is for ever.
So we take three stories – well, actually more than three stories, but we’ll leave that for a moment – featuring three male protagonists who are known only by letters; initials perhaps, it’s never clear. There’s X who witnesses a meeting between a man on a tractor and two men in a red truck, a meeting which begins cordially enough but ends with one of the men in the truck blowing away the tractor driver with a shotgun. They make their exit, only for X to enter having seen the driver hide a briefcase in a hay bail just prior to the meeting. Then the driver gets up, not as fatally injured as he at first seemed, and X impulsively uses the discarded shotgun to shoot the driver for a second time, this time fatally. Then there’s Z, who goes to work for the local Federation in a mundane job which allows much time for deliberation on the life of his predecessor, Cuevas, who, as it later transpires, had anything but a mundane life. Finally, there’s H, who’s recruited to take pictures of small monoliths along a river, only to find that there is also engaged another, Cesar, whose task is to blow the monoliths up with dynamite.
It would be easy here to fall into the trap of expecting the stories, Babel or Amores Perros-like, to merge, to overlap, but Llinás is quick to show that, though lives can and do intersect, more often than not they don’t. It’s a film to relish the little details, such as observed by X in the period where he holes himself up in a hotel thinking himself the target of criminals, watching people come and go and forming a routine by their routines, watching the world go by. And within these three plot strands, Llinás weaves various sub-plots, seemingly disposable, mini-stories about everything from a Mephistophelean Italian architect to and incident with German troops involving a group of English die-hards known as the ‘Jolly Goodfellows’, a bastardised hybrid of Dumas’ Musketeers and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds to a scene depicting the death of an old lion called The Colonel which may be the most moving of its type since Bresson’s Balthazar met his end surrounded by sheep. Or of a girl opposite X who may have been another story, were the author so inclined, deciding instead to follow that of a girl torn between a dim husband and a more cultured older man. X tries to tie her disappearance into his own tangled conspiracy, but we are then told it’s not remotely connected. It’s all said in that opening scene, later told in so many ways and from so many angles, enticing you in by refusing to make anything clear cut. Everything is fluid, everything is told, but illustrated, like a perfectly formed novella read out loud with visual accompaniment. It’s a masterpiece and one of the great modern films, but who has seen it or knows of Llinás? To quote, Fu-Manchu-like, the architect in the film, “they will soon hear from me. They will know who I am.”
Ah so it’s finally here. I’m really really glad you could slip in this review here, Allan. It’s a film that many should see.
MovieMan and Jamie are talking about escapist entertainment and childlike responses to films elsewhere. This is the film that the discussion might lead to. A truly remarkable work.
And that’s a terrific final line there. Hope we do.
In response to your last line: let’s hope so!
Allan, I’m thrilled you got to see this and even more thrilled you liked it as much as I did! Thanks for reminding me of so many wonderful moments in this film – I don’t think I even mentioned the lion in my review (written about a month after the screening I attended) even though at the time it struck me much as it did you. I really hope people take the time to read your wonderful celebration of this delightfully shaggy masterpiece, and then if/when they get the chance, seek this film out. It really is one of the greatest movies of the past decade. And I’d add to JAFB’s point above, it combines the adventurousness of the “extreme” film and the good cheer and wide-eyed wonder of the best children’s entertainment (perhaps in part because it has a “storyteller”) into one movie, albeit one which contains multitudes.
Bravo!
In essence, guys, this film sums up the problem with doing those blasted countdowns in the first place. Something will always come along later. If I had access to this before the countdown started, it would have been top 25. probably even top 10. And with the exception of the silent poll, the same is true of every other countdown.
Message to Allan, Movie Man, Adam, et al.
AOL Mail has been down since last night, so any mail sent on to me is not being received at this time.
Sam, I guess it’s time you moved on to other mail services. You can always automatically redirect the mails to your AOL account to these providers…
Aye JAFB, you are surely quite right there. The AOL mail is now back in working order, but to be honest this is a recurring problem. I just registered a new yahoo account at samjuliano@yahoo.com as a back up. It’s so frustrating.
I’m was sure Allan was trying to reach me to watch some Yoshidas today, as I have the day off. I will be watching indeed.
Allan and JAFB, how about THIS new release?!?
http://softfilm.blogspot.com/2010/07/dvd-spotlight-wild-rose-1932.html
An order is imminent!
Whoa, after Joel, we have two recent write-ups by JAFB and Allan Fish. Incidentally, I too think of this film to be a modern masterpiece. It shares a lot in its tone and structure with a serious novella as much as a child-like fantasy. The effect to bring such a strange concoction is ingenious. In this regard, this is quite like Magnolia was to 90’s, and I don’t mean to disservice either films. And it’s apt that the shot from tractor scene prologue precedes this piece!
Aye Dualist, and here’s JAFB’s stupendous essay: