LISANDRO ALONSO

Argentina as No Man’s Land

By MARTÍN CABALLERO

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Argentina is more than just Buenos Aires.

If you have a Jewish relative living in Manhattan, you'll understand what I'm talking about. My father is from the Argentine capital, and having been there myself, I know it as a welcome home to the well-educated, self-important and deeply neurotic cosmopolitan class of South America's second-largest country. Cinematically, the city's porteño culture has been a popular export (usually not for the better) for foreign auteurs such as Francis Ford Coppola (Teatro) or Hollywood studios looking for potential remakes. Lisandro Alonso, the acclaimed director who will be presenting his own films this week in Cambridge, may live in Buenos Aires like most Argentines, but his vision stands in stark contrast to city life, emphasizing themes of solitude, silence and self-reflection within the context of nature.

Alonso's 2001 debut, La Libertad, shows the director in an early stage of his artistic development. Shot in a documentary-style 35-mm format, Libertad indifferently follows the toil of Miseal, a solitary lumberjack working in the Argentine pampas, over the course of a day's work. The elements that would reappear in his other films—Los Muertos (2004) and Fantasma (2006), both of which will be screened at the Harvard Film Archive—are all present here: a mostly stationary camera capturing long, lingering shots; minimal dialogue; a rural setting; and the use of nonprofessional actors.

Alonso's insistence on using real people for roles in which they more or less play themselves is a bold risk that proves crucial to making his films work. The script serves only as written guide of thematic choices and ideas; in the rare moments of spoken dialogue, the unaltered rhythm of speech and vocabulary of rural Argentina is preserved through the actors. For Liverpool, Alonso traveled to the film's setting—the cold southern tip of the country known as Tierra del Fuego—to scout locations when he found his next star: Juan Fernández, a snow plow driver clearing the streets. Another nonprofessional—Argentino Vargas—made such an impression on Alonso while portraying a recently released prisoner in Los Muertos that he returned to play the lead role as a theatergoer in Fantasma, Alonso's one and only film set in Buenos Aires.

Unrestrained by narrative or consistent dialogue, Alonso's films are richly textured through ambient sounds, like one sense made more acute by the loss of another. As with his cinematography, Alonso's presentation is open-ended; he seems to disdain a deliberate approach, allowing sounds to linger and develop their own place within context. This hands-off approach works with simple effectiveness, most notably in Los Muertos. The lingering creak of the chains on a swing set echo long after its occupant departs, while an ex-convict's cathartic tryst with a prostitute after his release passes with nothing above the garbled sounds of physical labor.

The result is a body of work not easily digested without proper context, so be glad that Alonso will be on hand to present and discuss all four of his films. It would be a good time to ask his opinion, as his terse camerawork and presentation betray little of his own philosophies, deferring to his subjects to create their own unmitigated realities on screen. Unlike porteños from the city, Alonso doesn't need to ruthlessly dissect and analyze. Sometimes silence says so much more.

FOR AN INTERVIEW WITH ALONSO, CLICK OVER TO WEEKLYDIG.COM.

NO MAN'S LAND—THE CINEMA OF LISANDRO ALONSO
HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE
FRI 11.6.09-SUN 11.8.09
24 QUINCY ST., HARVARD SQ.
CAMBRIDGE
617.495.4700
7PM/$12
HCL.HARVARD.EDU/HFA