Among the films presented at Zinemaldia, there are many that focus the suffering, although the themes, styles or approaches can be very varied. Today, from the movies Blue Folders and The Daughter of All Rabias, I'm going to talk about the best and least sincere ways to bring suffering to the screen.
The documentary Blue Folders, which competes in the Zinemira section, is part of a report entitled The Research Project on Torture in the Basque Country between 1960 and 2014. The objective coldness of the report is the return to film language, as he himself has made clear, one of the objectives of director Ander Iriarte. A comprehensive analysis of torture is carried out throughout the film. To this end, it is essential to involve the professionals who have worked on the development of the report and the testimonies of the torture suffered.
Thus, the film explores an interesting crossroads between the sensible objectivity of the report and the utterly personal reports of torture. In this way, the quantitative work that underlies the allegations of torture is made known, in which the numbers, censuses and percentages are of vital importance. Without always losing humanity, the documentary also delves into the unpleasant questions to ask and into the painful memories to remember. I cannot imagine how difficult it should be to deal with a subject like torture from the cinema, but the need to reinsert it is perfectly reaffirmed by Ander Iriarte. As a spectator, it's always hard to confront these kinds of movies, with the same result: respect and a knot that you can't detach in your throat.
On the other hand, The daughter of all rabias, directed by Laura Baumeister, is part of the programming of New Directors. The film was awarded the Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2019 and the WIP Latam Industry in 2021. Baumeister brings us to Nicaragua to meet María (Ara Alejandra Medal), a girl who has grown up and educated in misery, who lives with her mother in a gigantic landfill. The lifestyle traversed by violence also typifies with violence the bittersweet relationship of mothers and their daughters. So even though she loves her daughter passionately, she should leave her in a recycling factory. But Mary is very heady and will do her and do five to try to return with her mother.
The work of the young Ara Alejandra Medal is impressive in the protagonist role, it has seemed to me the most applausible element of the film. As for the plot, Baumeister makes us go through numerous positions and situations, but it does not allow time for any of them to develop properly. The director is asking everywhere and I think there are too many things that do not have proper development. The argument becomes stronger when Mary reaches the recycling plant and meets other working children. But the film doesn't put that attractive stage aside and it moves forward, without being very clear where Gixajo Maria goes.
Poverty, dirt, rape, child exploitation... The film does not fail to show a miserable situation, including the dead dogs. As I said at the beginning of this writing, when it comes to portraying suffering, not everything is lawful and it seems that, crossing all the red lines, the only objective of this film is to emotionally destroy the viewer. The claims listed successively are devoid of meaning. Everything gets worse with the end when everything seen gets frivolized as a result of the return to the fantasy that hosts the film. I've come out of the room with rage.
Anyone would condemn the issue of torture in a morbid or ambiguous manner (for example, suggesting that the person who has been tortured has become more blunt because of harassment). Why then accept that in fiction? I do not mean, under any circumstances, directly censoring those issues that may be difficult or controversial (if you start to censure, because we know perfectly well who has the exclusive and unique competence to do so), but to approach them honestly, to avoid selling the morb. Because there is no poetics in misery, no beauty in suffering, no beauty in life, no beauty in film.
Like Cary Grant on the arid road of North by Northwest, like Jean-Paul Belmondo, advancing in the final scene of À bout de souffle and, above all, in the neurotic dance as the protagonist of Denis Lavant de Mauvais sang. So I've been running around like crazy these days: from... [+]
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Dear Tonina, Loreto, Wal, Viki, etc. :
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