Gaucho-western takes a look at Argentina’s past, with abuse of power at centre stage
“El movimiento tells a story set in some sort of no man’s land at a foundational time in Argentina, in which the protagonist tries to embody everything at once: the rules and the authority, he knows what to do and how to do it, and he believes he’s the one who has to do it, he suffers from some kind of messianic madness,” says Argentine filmmaker Benjamín Naishtat (Historia del miedo/History of Fear) about his second outing, which won Best Film in the Argentine competition in last year’s Mar del Plata Festival.
So imagine a small group of armed men inhabiting a vast and desolate land fallen into anarchy during the first half of the 19th century as they move across Patagonia and impose their will on defenceless townspeople. As expected, there’s much rivalry among some of these groups, but nonetheless they all claim they belong to El Movimiento (The Movement), a growing political force that seems to know no boundaries when it comes to getting what they want.
El Señor (Pablo Cedrón), a well-learned man, is the leader of one of these groups and he seeks to establish a new order in the region. And while he can be quite an appealing conversationalist, he can also be as cruel as it gets. After all, he’s a man with a hunger for power. Does that ring a bell?
Like Historia del miedo, El movimiento (The Movement) can’t be pinned to a given genre. But you could say it’s a gaucho-western that takes a look at Argentina’s past from the present, in the way of historical revisionism. So it makes sense that Naishtat draws some telling parallels with a more recent political panorama where violence, abuse of power, betrayal and mayhem take centre stage. And whereas he has some noteworthy insights, the truth is that some observations are quite obvious, and oddly enough, without much of a new outlook.
As far as its aesthetics go, this is a film that marks some achievements, mainly its striking, captivating black-and-white cinematography enriched by a sound design that goes beyond mere description of the environment. These two elements — cinematography and sound design — create and maintain a sense of space that at times feels timeless. Another asset, and yet only to a certain extent, is it theatrical mise-en-scene, which has a very cinematic edge as it incorporates a good array of eloquent close-ups.
At times, El movimiento is somewhat hypnotic in formal terms. However, it’s a shame its non-naturalistic approach and its apparently novel discourse soon begin to wear thin and feel somewhat pretentious — which were also unfortunate flaws in Naishtat’s debut feature.
Production notes
El movimiento (Argentina, South Korea, 2015). Written and directed by Benjamín Naisthat. With Pablo Cedrón, Marcelo Pompei, Francisco Lumerman, Céline Latil, Alberto Suárez, Agustín Rittano. Cinematography: Yarará Rodriguez. Editing: Andrés Quaranta. Running time: 70 minutes.
@pablsuarez
