Space Odyssey without space, but with cowboys splashing in the water and on the desert land children are in different relationships adults.
There are conventionally rather long, slow shots. They always want to show us something and tell us something without saying or showing anything. Whether it is a deep philosophy, or not understand what. But a lot of nature, people, architecture diverse, noise, music and almost silence.
Free relationships between people of different ages, which consist in the fact that you are not faithful sexually or even in terms of platonic love. In different versions, this tape describes what is happening in this world. Not colorful and juicy, as it likes Hollywood, but it is quite accessible to understand the layman.
There is also a modern form of slavery, conditional, when there are owners of life and those who work for the owners with a smile, taking care of the property of the owners, moved and so on, the children of the owners, etc.
In the rest of the movie comes to the following conclusion: what a person sows, will reap - a fundamental conclusion, which is pronounced by the only voiceover of the presenter, as it were, a child's voice, a child's conclusion. Our heroes are grown-ups like children... they are children who make childish, stupid mistakes.
You've never been spying on me before.
- You never lied to me before.
How simply, over the years, the directors, who at the very beginning of their career aimed at the existential depths of knowledge about life and death, trying to scrape their special handwriting with incredibly sophisticated images and metaphors, still resign themselves to the idea that the universe should not be opened, and there is no one more complicated by nature than the person himself and what concerns him. For example, another person.
Carlos Reigadas, in whose “Japan” the artist, who decided to die, settles in the mountains with an elderly Indian widow, and in “Battle in Heaven” the chauffeur of the general’s family is haunted by the torments of conscience and sleeps with the boss’s daughter, decides in “Silent Light” to deal with what is eating a man if he only loves someone other than his wife and children. In After Darkness, Reygadas focuses on a couple whose departure from the bohemian lifestyle turns into a difficult journey to themselves (and to finish it sometimes requires a particularly strong shock). And finally, in Our Time, the director takes on the screen himself and his wife in the roles of ranchers whose polygamous relationship is undergoing a painful crisis.
While film critics meaningfully argue that the main character of the picture is time, covering everyone and everything in a tenacious web of relationships, one should still turn to the sparkling simplicity of the plot, which is only a bone overgrown with pictorial techniques of varying degrees of ingenuity.
A man, a woman and another man. Sometimes it is other. But he and she are at the center of everything. Still in love? How to say... Everyone will answer this question in their own way. How do they feel about the world and each other? Here the director’s imagination gives itself a free rein: I don’t know where else you will see the night city with the eye of the landing gear of the plane, while the background reads Esther’s letter to Juan; or you will witness one bull throwing another into a cliff; or through the engine of the car you will feel how the heart of a woman beats. Reygadas is unconscionably good at the credibility of his own vision. He is discouraged by the extremely tactile penetrativeness of the cinematic language, its poetic potential is largely equal to literature: if what cannot be shown can be described in words, this time you can show what there are no words for.
Of course, three-hour timekeeping is energy-consuming, sometimes not everything here delays attention to a sufficient extent, but the degree of satisfaction from viewing depends on the degree of immersion in the material, and it occurs in each individual. Here you are involuntarily revelling in the variety of ways of telling history. The volumetric detachment of the prologue and epilogue from the plot canvas, the throwing of feelings in an epistolary manner, the collision of the narrative with a pure visual and even the childish voiceover of the narrator, which occurs when it is especially necessary - a whole set of tools with which Reigadas opens his head and soul to put something inside that is difficult to find a name. Something mystical, I suppose. Unbelievable. A special emotional and worldview range, given from birth only to selected artists and creators.
When exposed to this hidden force, any banality loses its banality: you no longer watch a movie about polygamous relationships. You are witnessing an all-consuming human tendency to escape from illusions, a boomerang of pain, and an awareness of the imperishability of any attempts at this escape, returning a person back to the darkness of his unruly world, full of impulses and passions – destructive enough to be able to resist them. The spring has long been twisted, no matter how many heroes lie to each other that it does not exist.
This is how Reygadas works today.
This is how the movie is made.
8 out of 10
A cultured person must know the teachings of Freud.
The intellectual wanders in the wilds of his own personality against the background of basic instinct. Sexual attraction is a terrible force. – Freud No matter how intellectual you are, if you do not understand this force and do not know how to build interaction with it, you will definitely get some traumatic adventures. The main character, concerned about his sexuality, involves his wife in his personal quarrels, who seems to love, but ignoring her real feelings and experiences, that is, not understanding, not loving her as a person, but using her as an object. All the intellectual entourage and verbose intellectual commentary is garbage. The main thing in all this action is the wandering of cattle in the fog (with a small prospect of distant and meaningless from a human point of view) in the hearty pastures and the competition from time to time of bulls among themselves in attempts to prove to someone their steepness (dull force). This blindness and well-fed stupidity are formed in modern life from childhood, which is figuratively shown at the beginning of the film in the fuss of children in mud and dirty water. This way of life - water in its different states - Reygadas took from A. Tarkovsky, he did well.
Juan and Esther are a Mexican couple in a long-term relationship. Outside the city, they have their own ranch with bulls and horses, which is a permanent residence. In parallel, Juan writes poetry and is a significant poet for Mexican readers, and Esther teaches English literature. In their marriage, a noticeable crisis escalates, which subsequently crosses all boundaries when an American Phil appears on the ranch, who interested Esther.
The film appeared at the box office in January 2019, before that its premiere took place at the Venice Film Festival a year earlier. The main roles are performed by the director himself and his wife, which, according to most film critics, including reveals the main background of the film - perhaps creative people needed to figure out themselves (over, Dolan understands every year), as a result of which this tape was born, like a child used to save marriage. And even though Reigadas refutes this – on this side of the screen still becomes known with double accuracy.
Freedom in relationships is a progressive topic. Not for movies, for life itself. On the one hand, any such freedom is a point to strive for. The unity of the sexual partner, life in marriage to the grave and other moldy foundations and traditions are a lost past that gives no chance for the future. As soon as Esther and Phil have an affair that seems to cease into sincere love, Juan becomes a kind of innovator and supporter of modern ideologies - he seeks the transparency of his wife's love relationship on the side, independently brings her to his seemingly rival side. Phil is advised to be liberated and forget about the existence of a long marriage. Here comes the second side, the negative side, which in most cases does not make the point of achieving complete freedom in the relationship available.
There is no equality.
Juan stays on the sidelines. Actively “mating” his wife, he increasingly exerts pressure on her, forcing her to submit, which in the name of a ghostly, but general freedom, deprives her of personal freedom. Is there a need for Esther to indulge her husband? Nothing. From this, Juan goes to the side of the loser in this love triangle - let him be at the base, but the two remaining parties will strive for each other. From this it turns out that such a balancing of roles in relationships is impossible - they will in any case be driven by jealousy caused by the loss of their power role.
This is an object of study for Reygadas. The film, equipped with two heroes-writers, itself strives for literature as much as possible, reminiscent of a large sonorous classic novel, a passion novel and a self-determination novel required for reading within the framework of a high creativity program. Every element of the life of the characters, which from the outside seems a banal lack of understanding, revelation, audacious boyhood, is presented by the director like a burst of thunder, when each family member rushes around his home, clogging open windows. Hence, such as rubbing iron against concrete, shots of an endless flight over a huge city - undoubtedly the best author's look in cinema in recent years.
No matter how many clashes there would be in such a scenario, they are not solvable, the way out by compromise will never be acceptable for either side. In this image, Reygadas touches eternity, which is why the name “our!” is called – as much as you take a person, on the outside he does not change, on the outside he is an element without time, but on the inside for him the very “now” is in the first roles. Was not freedom born with the advent of man?
In terms of kit and narrative, this, at the moment, is still the best film of the director, who managed to put together many directions, otherwise, try to look at the human world through invisible time and tangible relationships (you can mention the demonstration of the engine, and the behavior of bulls, and the start shot with children on the coastal strip, which set multiple vectors, being both lyrical retreats and assistants in demonstrating the fullness of the world). Frankness and openness, along with such harmony of the show and perseverance of the director, are not only novels. Not just a cut off flap from the track of mounted time. They also show a holistic simplicity, expressed through several local complexities, perhaps also manifested in the apartments of the infinite city. And in general, the infinite world.
“Bitter Moon” by Roman Polansky in the similarity of love bends, “Diary of his wife” by Alexei Uchitel in moans of superstitious feelings with rebellious intransigence. The world of two people burned by love.
Connected by one chain
Related to a single purpose
One chain chain chained
Related to one
Carlos Reygadas considers Andrei Tarkovsky one of his spiritual teachers. The poetry of the Soviet genius is most close and consonant with the organics of his soul. The manner of writing - enveloping slowness, slowness - explosions of emotional moaning. Looking into the Mexican expanses and hearing Russian motives - How do I know what to call what I want? And how do I know I don't really want what I want? Or let’s say I don’t really want what I don’t want? These are all some elusive things — if you call them, how they disappear, melt, evaporate. Like a jellyfish in the sun. Have you ever seen it?
Slow-tight beginning where careless childhood, and then youth in the flood of the mud river. Plenty of rain fills the dried bed and gray slurry takes everyone in its arms. Cool under the scorching sun. It’s fun and fun to save from the heat. But the short period of pampering pranks, the heavenly heat falling from the heights, incinerates this mercy to the bitterness. Did you get it? So you enjoyed it. Time is fleeting at this time. Time is fleeting, the master says. And the phase flow of age into the understanding of the viewer. Metaphorical, scattered clues. One, let's go.
Here the joints are sluggish, and the spaces are huge
Here the compositions were crushed to make columns
Some words for kitchens, others for streets
Here eagles are dropped for broiler chickens ...
The poet Juan and his wife Esther, a literature teacher at the okoeme ranch. With bulls, horses among children, servants, buddies. Here is the training of a matador, immediately the taming of wild horses. Each frame, depending on the richness of your imagination, on self-attitude, is able to offer a range of perfect collage diversity. The author does not bother to pressure the viewer. He's just scattering food. If you want, eat. Can you think? Through association, you will discover a deep world. Are you not ready to go into the wilds of comparative images? Take what is happening as a given. Enjoy the aesthetic pleasure of contemplation. When a person is born, he is weak and flexible, and when he dies, he is strong and stale. When a tree grows, it is tender and flexible, and when it is dry and rigid, it dies. Callousness and strength are the companions of death. Weakness and flexibility express the freshness of being. What is hardened will not win.
A wounded soul. A shabby artist. A reflexive singer of words. Or, to put it simply, the nerd is terrible. Just starting to touch his wife with words and a garbage can open with a lid. Like last year's stubble in a fertile field. The written word is a bouquet of fragrance, pronounced - depletion of air. A tick sucking on a young organism. Leech clinging. Emotions in self-flagellation, self-humiliation. But who cares? Hardly another role-playing couple in front of us. Especially since Esther, during the years she spent with Juan, learned protective techniques. And skillfully puts them in motion closer to the denouement of the film.
Here you can play on the trumpet
But no matter how you play, you all play.
And if there are those who come to you,
There will be those who will come after you.
“Our Time”, which is not very typical for Carlos Reigadas, is a linear story, and therefore much closer to the viewer than the mysterious figurative opuses, thanks to which the director wrote his name among the main innovators of the new century. But it's not that simple. The truth is that Reygadas is a genius film scammer. In a good way, of course. For someone, maybe bad, but the Mexican is playing such a delicate game that it is impossible not to admire it!
There are a lot of directors, for whom the status of provocateurs has been fixed, but this secret agent does not betray himself and with the help of skillful disguise leaves a number of intellectuals in complete bewilderment after getting acquainted with his works. Probably everyone got into a situation where, having heard the taunt, he could not explain for himself whether it was said in a joke or the person was extremely serious. With Reigadas cinema, such tricks happen all the time. Let me give you an example. In Nuestro tiempo he starred with his wife and children. Naturally, they played the whole role of family. The plot is based on specific cases of implementing the idea of free relationships. The painting in oil: the husband sends his wife with a lover to the house, and he first sneaks there to watch for treason. Watching this, it is impossible to get rid of the idea that we have a real husband and a real wife. You can't get rid of this worm, it's too deep. And the viewer is constantly forced to think about how much is autobiographical and how much fiction. This thought is a subtle but strong thread associated with the following: in the film creates the feeling that the husband himself persuades his wife to cheat, and she suffers from this, respectively, what in this case is the act of embodying their family life on the screen? Sounds like torture. Sometimes, however, it seems that he sincerely wants his beloved all the best. Maybe he suffers himself or even consciously drives himself to frenzy. Or suffer and enjoy. Try to solve this puzzle, friend! - as if the author winks. And when things go to hell, we'll show you how a bull blows a horse's stomach. You're too used to causal editing, and now you've got to move your mind, try to connect these scenes. Find the hidden symbol in this and we will go on the bumps of the eccentric family drama.
Sitting down, you realize that you are being led by the nose, but the solution to the trick, as a rule, is a boring thing, but watching the disappearance of a coin from the magician's fist can be with great pleasure. In unknowability there are its undoubted advantages. A key feature of purely narrative cinema is excessive focus. Many, many figures of screen art let you walk along the narrow path of the plot, controlling the pace so that you do not have time to lose concentration on the content, on the action following the action. Reygadas, in contrast to this popular approach, creates works open to interpretation, in a recent interview with The Art of Cinema, he responds to one of the assumptions of Anton Dolin: “I have my own opinion and vision on this, but it is no more important than yours.” It is pleasant to watch how the fact of getting into the Russian box office of this beautiful film was covered with a wave of heated discussions about the nature of time, the symbol of the bull, morality, suffering, creativity and sexuality. Another idea, important for understanding Our Time, the director reveals in an interview with Andrei Kartashov: The narrative is only part of the film, important, but secondary. In my films, the plot is the most boring. It is interesting in cinema how the author perceives life and the world around him, and how he expresses it in language. For me, it is the way we see the world that makes each person unique.” Perhaps this is what contemporary art should be, and Reigadas is at the forefront of the cinema of the present and the cinema of the future.
On the one hand, everything is simple: there is a ranch, it is huge and rich, it is run by a middle-aged husband and a beautiful middle-aged wife of extraordinary stature and authentic beauty. They are wealthy and can afford to patronize new cowboys, giving them a “chance of a lifetime” to beat the bulls. Then it turns out that the husband is actually a poet, and even a recognized one - they send him letters that it is necessary to fly far away and take the prize at an international poetry competition, but for some reason he hesitates ... he does not write for a long time, and when a poet does not write, he seems to be no more a poet. Until it turns out that his wife has a lover, and the husband is only indignant, why she lied to him and did not tell him about it. His acceptance of the situation, his play-in, his almost martyric posture bring the woman out of balance.
This picture is a kind of psychotherapy through the camera between the spouses and in real life Carlos Reigadas and Natalia Lopez. This is an act of exhibitionism not only bodily, but also pulling out of the subconscious all the demons, everything, but also wrapping everything in a dense tangle of contradictions. Cinema is like poetry. The word is as screen as the expanses of the Mexican desert. It is possible that Reygadas was inspired by Tarkovsky, making his film language so refined and poetic. In some places, the action goes into such semitones and subtexts that you have to strain so as not to lose the thread.
The husband wants to share in her sin so much that he takes away her self from her wife. When your identity is taken away, it's probably not that easy to forgive. And then the most terrible thing happens - yes, exactly what he was so afraid of and that he rejected with all his nature, giving way to adultery before his eyes. His selfishness destroys their bond. But poems are written...
And in the end, I want to ask only one question: is suffering an ultimatum muse?
8 out of 10