There is a certain thing about multi-story movies that make them not really the best of movies to be able to appreciate. For one, sometimes there is no clear border of when something ends and when something starts. And sometimes, thats what is necessary but does not exist, at other times there is no flow and its like your feet are stuck in the swamp of one short and cannot move into another. Amazingly, none of these things happen in Relatos Salvajes, Damian Szifron's extraordinary Argentinian surprise. I was not surprised to see that this excellent feature was nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar in 2015 given its beautifully clever, entertaining and cohesive wit.
The stories that are brought together as neatly as the packaging of a cake in 'Bombita' are more often that not dark and laced with perhaps darker humour. 'Pasternak' to start with starts ringing the ominous bell in the viewers head within about 2 minutes and while we have an inkling of whats to come, it brings out the shadowed areas in ones psyche by making us actually relish the happenings on screen. One does not have to be intelligent to guess whats coming next but did the director actually think of what he's stirring up in the viewers mind? I would rate this one of the best opening takes among almost all of the movies I've seen in the past five years.
The second short 'The Rats' reminded me of something I noticed in Agatha Christies 'Murder on the Orient express'. Sometimes, there is a notion created around a character that literally smells and the subtlety with which the notion is created provides a lot of satisfaction, no doubt to the auteur as well as the viewer. No one likes a condescending man, but is that enough for revenge thats best served with ketchup? Moral boundaries are a thing of the past in todays swift moving non judgemental world but when an individual insists on having moral boundaries, the only thing to check is the expiration date and the only thing to wonder about is, does a thing get more or less strong after its exprired? What better way to leave a question unanswered if not with a question itself.
The third short 'Road to Hell' is explained expertly by a question my wife asked of me when we were in the middle of it - Are they trying to discourage me from ever taking a road trip in an unknown country? Class differences are a big part of contemporary life - have you ever overtaken a slowpoke who tries to keep you from moving forward in a fast lane and then given him/her the finger? If you answer yes or even if you answer no, this little short is an explosively darkly humorous look at actions and consequences. It even led me to wonder about the false bravado of all of us man children when it comes to maybe a little bit of verbal provocation. An excellently edited bit of cinema, again we do not feel its been almost an hour into the movie when we get to the end of this.
Modern and large cities often have issues related to their locally legislated laws when it comes to utilities. The next short reminded me too much of the city I currently live in - Bangalore and also a few other cities from around the world. There is a part where the frustrated protagonist of 'Bombita' explains that just working for a thief does not distance one from the thievery. The exasperation of an average city dweller is made to go through our brain like a fever in this story of a normal man taking on almost the role of a revolutionary when the system brutally forces him to do so without explicitly targeting him. Every one of us is part of this macabre system and so is justice. As one of the women in 'The Rats' explains - too many of us watch the evil around us without doing anything about it. A good movie almost always succeeds in the amount of empathy it generates and 'Bombita' is a wildly successful little short.
Which brings us to 'The Deal'. I was reminded of Salman Khan in not too subtle a way and that again shows the winning nature of this movie. True cinema is nothing but a reflection of real life and the deal through its corrupt shades of black, grey and yellow shows us the truly pathetic nature of governing bodies and the people who are supposed to bring us justice. It resonated more in my hollow skull because of a recent incident where I saw a cop came over to collect 10 rupees from a bhel puri stand and the similarity world wide is underlined only in the corruption of it all. In my mind I had another title for the short movie popped in - The Negotiator.
The last short left me with one word in the back of my mind - bittersweet. What better than a wedding scene - one of the best and most raucous to boot - than to frame a twisty bendy dark tale of romance and human nature around. Without going into details the fickle nature of modern relationships is analysed in great detail in wide, zoomed, tracked shots that follow people around in the banquet hall of what looks like a high rise hotel and moves between its kitchens, corridors, the terrace and back to the banquet hall. The human mind sometimes only accepts what it wants and nothing else - no less no more and sometimes it breaks down and other times it puts itself together. As someone once said it is the seat of savage grace and 'Till death do us part' puts this in perspective.
These are probably winners as individual short stories, but when put together there is something about them that flows like a dark rippling current in the background of all these stories. Sometimes it causes our heart to jump into our throat, our eyes to widen, our inner mind to smirk with satisfaction and at other times it just makes us nod along in approval and acknowledgement. In this participation that Szifron entices out of us with his movie, he wins and wins in a fashion that makes him an international director to watch out for and his movies, features that we would want to await.
Five stars in my book.
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