Los Muertos

Haunting, meditative, enigmatic film, with very little dialogue. In the Argentine forest a man is released from a rural prison after serving times for killing his two brothers. Most of the movie is his boat journey home to find his daughter. When he gets there he encounters his grandchildren. Is he guilty, innocent? Will he kill the kids? Are they the bodies at the beginning of thefilm, or are those his brothers? The lack of answers could feel like a cop out, but left me with a nightmarish feeling of open ended horror. The style is simple and spare, with long wordless takes. But we know there's something going on, even if we never fully get the answers. Sort of a cinematic, visual equivalent of the plays of Harold Pinter. NB: The Facets DVD is a sadly weak transfer of this very striking looking film, but it's probably your only way to see this fascinating work.

I never felt like this film knew exactly what it wanted to meditate on. Like the main character, Vargas, who is always looking around in a sort of anxious but also calm manner, the film never seems to get into a rhythm that allows us to 'be with' Vargas and for a film this slow it never really settles down.I did pick up on a feeling of impending doom, that Vargas is a sort of death bringer (Los Muertos) who as he travels along the river is always taking from the world around him, but not giving. He is always either given something by the people around him (drink, haircut, canoe), or he's clever enough to live off the land and survive with no help (the bee hive, and the goat). He's a formidable man who, we learn at the start, has been in prison for murder, but he's free now and I got the feeling his final intention was to finish something that had been left for a very long time.Yet there's so little to go on here that I'm not sure we're given enough information to really know what is going on and since the movie is mostly jungle scenery there isn't even enough visual information to key in on for some sort of theme about nature or survival. It's all a little too vague. Unsettling for sure, and for that reason it's worth at least seeing, but I think it sort of misses its mark in that it doesn't really know what it wants to 'say'.

The beginning of this intriguing film is both magical and haunting. A camera wanders slowly through an unknown jungle, only occasionally zeroing in on something recognizable, a tree trunk, a bit of grass, for the most part the light that only shines partially through the green creates an iridescent pattern of crystals, until we recognize the body of a bleeding child, and then another, and the lower parts of a man who stalks past the camera with a bloody weapon. That's all we have, and all we know, but it leaves us with the suspicion that the seemingly passive and thoughtful prisoner we are introduced to next must have been the murderer.When we meet Vargas he is an aging man in prison, soon to be released. He is asked by a fellow prisoner to deliver a letter by canoe on his way to find his estranged daughter. As he travels deeper into the forest, he seems to be entering into his own, freeing himself from the estrangement and isolation he had built around himself in prison. There are a number of mysteries that surround his past, and the film is not aiming to reveal mysteries, only to depict a voyage whose outcome is an ambiguous return to the beginning. Vargas speaks only to serve some definite function, and answers questions regarding his past by denying its significance. Still, there is something quite powerful about the enigma that is Vargas, his almost animal bearing, his rough sensuality, his revelation through the landscape and its flowing waters. The film is most easily comparable to the work of Carlos Reygadas, and bears some resemblance to the enigmatic journey depicted in the film Japon. The film manages to maintain tension without any outward acceleration, a slow and simmering style.

This was a remarkable film for me; primarily for two reasons. One was the interaction between man and nature and how Vargas was able to find himself again by the transformation back to his roots. The other, which is someone related, is a glimpse into the simplicity of what life is for millions of people and despite the harshness individuals survive and find meaning in their lives. I also read into the ending a message of hope, in that one could imagine that Vargas was needed and could contribute to his family.

Los Muertos is a contemplative and controlled film about a man in his environment. The film is incredibly understated, but never boring, in that it's always moving forward. The lead character, Vargas, is simply moving towards where he wants to go, first to deliver a letter one of the inmates left behind gives him for his daughter, and then to find his own grown daughter.The poetry and grace in the storytelling is in simply watching this man, who has very little interactions with other humans, move forward. He is a man of little words, and of deliberate (and sometimes startling) action. The jungle is a powerful metaphor, of course, as is the river he travels in a small boat. The details of his journey are compelling and almost hypnotic - his smoking-out of a hive to get honeycomb, his sudden grabbing of a goat on the shore to kill it (my, this scene surprised me - it happens in one cut and is not faked), etc.An elliptical comment early on, in which a man cleaning a fish asks if he really killed his brothers, is answered by Vargas, "I don't remember all that anymore." That's about the extent of the backstory, and the film allows you to consider this man's place and if he can ever find what he's going towards. Less is more in this case, and the film-making ends up being powerful, and evoking Antonioni or Dreyer in its confidence that showing a person in his/her surroundings is sometimes drama enough.

Película entretenida narra la defunción de un yayo de la casa ,y todos los preparativos los líos familiares y lo que importaba entonces el que diran