esrosedotblog

Today's Chilean film is a surrealist wet dream. Paul Ruis'

La noche de enfrente / Night Across the Street (2012)

This is the kind of film that you either love or hate, its obscurity and complexity is almost incomprehensible.

I chose, somewhere in the first quarter, to love it as I had the choice so, why not?

A man is on his way to dying. He is not a big deal. Just a clerk. But many friends surround him and he has his memories some of which are quite real to him even though, to us, they are imaginary. Long John Silver. A youngish Beethoven. A famous author. Then real childhood friends. Later bar friends. Some current acquaintances.

It all swirls around.

This is Ruis' last film. He made a hundred or more films in many languages. One of those guys.

I am suspicious of the subtitles here but I accepted them. There is a lot of poetry and song verses and so, my experience says, the imagery is subject to interpretation.

Now listen to this. An early scene is in a classroom where the "teacher" who happens to be the famous author, now in hiding with his real name, explains that the same phrase in one language or another does not work. Only in its original language does it make sense.

Warning taken.

There is a lot of meta stuff here. The opening is of a vast landscape, we are flying along looking down. The fact that this sequence ends and then we are looking at people, a kind of landscape, and hearing a flow of words which do not seem to fit together, well, you get the picture.

The old guy in this life story that doesn't add up for us is the incredible Sergio Hernandez.

He stands and talks or reacts and there is complete understanding even if it all seems like word soup.

I know. Not to everyone's taste. In fact there were times I thought I would fall asleep only to be brought up short by something either shocking or absolutely clearly understandable. Or funny. There is a lot of "funny". You can't really take a lot of this kind of shit too seriously.

The cinematography is beautiful. Small elaborate rooms. Meticulous costumes. Serious lighting. Meaning that it wants to be serious. Then colors. A little red. More red. Even more red then blood. That red.

And so on. Great music. I have to hand it to him/them on that "score" (heh heh) a nice variable menu.

You could watch this fucking thing ten times and see stuff. I am happy to have seen it once. I am not sure that I would be as happy seeing it again whether it revealed more or not.

I take films at face value. That is to say the writer, director, auteur has something to say and he says it. It is enough to hear it once. Period. He had his shot.

Here, it is his last shot. A good job. He got me interested in his life work. Maybe I will see more.

A 3 out of Netflix5. I have no idea what the title means.

Labels: films