After garnering global critical acclaim of his South Pacific Cold War espionage thriller throwback, Pacifiction, Albert Serra, the Catalan "enfant terrible" of cinema, offers a documentary on bullfighting. A self-professed non-lover of the genre, Serra goes on to show the gory, testosterone and blood-filled world inside the bullring through the eyes of Andrés Roca Rey, a famed bullfighter from Peru. But again, this is Albert Serra film, so it is no ordinary documentary. In fact, it's nothing but.
Filmed almost entirely in close-ups in and around the bullring, It is clear that Afternoons of Solitude's aim is quite different. With the help of Serra close collaborator Artur Tort (Pacifiction, Death of Louis XIV) helming at the camera and also serving as an editor, the film has a striking consistency and rhythm to it. The bullfight is a highly ritualized endeavor: the getups - the montera (the Mickey Mouse hat that toreros wear), the tassels, the sparkly elaborate embroidery on the jacket, the pink pantyhose, the dainty satin shoes that resemble a ballerina's. And the actual bullfighting - with horse mounted lancers and the whole cuadrilla first attacking the bull and tire them out until matador steps in and finishing the job.
It's also highly gruesome business- stream of blood on the beast's back, the dirt, mud, mucus, the staring, strutting, and hollering, then death. The sight is not for the squeamish or animal lovers. There are multiple deaths of the bulls in the film. This highly ritualized killing has been a controversial tradition, criticized and protested from animal rights groups for years. Rightly or wrongly, Serra narrowly concentrates on what's in and around the ring, nothing else. This means nothing about Roca Rey, his entourage, the bulls, nothing. And this is what makes Afternoons of Solitude fascinating.
The sound we hear are heavy breathings of the beast and Roca Rey, his team feverishly singing the praises in the ring over and over again: You got the biggest balls! You are the greatest! You are the most beautiful human being in the world! With the pouty gaping mouth, Roca Rey stares down his beasts, while strutting like Mick Jagger. The battles are tense and the danger imminent. He gets gored a couple of times yet sustain only minor injuries. He hears other toreros with broken ribs over conversations.
Afternoons of Solitude has more common with Lucian Castraing Taylor (Leviathan, Sweetgrass) and the rest of the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) filmmakers' outputs, portraying haptic images on screen. Plus, examining machismo of the Spaniards associated with the bullfighting, not narrated but shown directly with no guise or insinuation. Serra's aim is capturing the purity: the purity of the ritual, the purity of the filmmakers who haven't had any prior experience with bullfighting, the purity of worship, the purity of self-assurance. It's a hard to sit through experience but another worthy effort from one of the most adventurous filmmakers of our time.
No comments:
Post a Comment