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The Films of Carlos Reygadas by Erik McClanahan
The screen is black. A mass of ambient sounds emerges to pull the
viewer into an immediate state of hypnosis. Crickets and a
plethora of other insects are making their voices heard. Cattle
and roosters join in, birds chirping, all while the camera slowly
spins around with the grace of a Hitchcock film. At first a bit
disorientating, soon it’s evident we’re looking at the
nighttime sky onscreen, clouds and stars all together to form a
perfect symbiosis with the soundtrack. The camera settles, and
some light appears on the horizon. As the sun rises, two trees
prominently frame the scene. The camera pulls in slowly to take
in this amazing image of a rural Mexican sunrise over a vast
field of farmland. The color palate a hybrid of Van Gogh and
Monet landscapes in one single, real-time, breathtaking moving
image.
It is now morning time, and the film begins Award-winning
writer/director Carlos Reygadas latest film, Silent Light
(Stellet Licht), gushes with pastoral beauty from its memorable
opening shot. No cold, distant computer-generated trickery on
display here, simply the natural world photographed impeccably.
Reygadas, Mexico City-born filmmaker, began his university career
in Brussels studying and practicing law. During his time in
Brussels, he would often go to the Museum of cinema to see as
many as three films a day. Heavily influenced by the works of
Tarkovsky, Rossellini, Bresson, Dreyer, Ozu and Kurosawa, he
eventually decided he had to go to film school to be surrounded
by the tools needed to become a filmmaker. Pushed by a friend to
make short films and given a super-8 camera, Reygadas learned how
to use the tools of cinema by doing. He immediately knew what he
wanted to shoot and was full of ideas.
From 1998 to
1999 Reygadas made four short films, learning how to draw
storyboards, produce, write, direct, shoot and work with actors.
His style was honed during these early works: Adult (Adulte
– 98), Prisoners (Prisonniers – 99), Birds (Oiseaux
– 99), and Super Human (Maxhumain – 99). Super Human, a
six minute, 20 second short, deals with suicide (a subject
explored often in his features) and Reygadas’ own questions
regarding God. It opens with a narration. The main character
remembers a conversation he had with his mother: if you commit
suicide you should go to heaven (Reygadas has said in interviews
he feels it’s a great human capacity to end our lives if we
want). His mother responded by telling him what God gives only he
can give back. His response to
that is: if God were perfect he would not test us. Mother’s
rejoinder is that life is a gift not a test. The narration ends
with this statement: I admired my mother, but wasn’t
satisfied with these explanations. The rest of the short plays
out a scene at a beach, and shows a man tying himself down to be
taken by the tide as a boy and his mother discuss an old story
she used to tell him, which leads to more frustration for the
main character. Throw in an odd sexual encounter with the mother
and the climactic death of the man on the beach and you have the
beginnings of a filmmaking talent whose career knows no bounds.
Japan (Japón), released in 2002 and screened at the Walker in
2003, won the Golden Camera Special Distinction at the Cannes
Film Festival. The film, shot in grainy 16 mm, highlights many of
Reygadas’ strengths: shooting landscapes – it is shot
in cinemascope (he got the idea from Gaspar Noe’s I Stand
Alone, the first film Reygadas saw shot with 16 mm in scope) with
an anamorphic lens, squeezing the image and showing off the
beautiful Mexican countryside and rolling mountains; his
insistence to work only with non-actors and his ability to pull
natural, realistic performances from them; big, biblical themes
that ruminate in nearly every scene, but are culled from the
minutia of everyday people living fairly simple lives; long takes
that pull the viewer into the reality of the characters; little
use of score, mainly using ambient sounds or diegetic music for
the soundtrack; graphic sexual encounters featuring actors not
typically seen in films having sex (i.e. old, unattractive and
fat people); focus on characters over story, and characters full
of contradictions. All of his films feature extremely memorable
opening and closing shots that resonate in the mind of the viewer
and are inescapable from memory. In Japan and his other two
features, its obvious Reygadas has a fondness for his actors, and
their characters in the film. But he also has deep respect for
the audience, and isn’t the least bit pretentious. He uses
his films to speak truths about the human condition and reveal
his philosophy on life, but never speaks down to the audience,
instead choosing to show the action and let the viewer come away
with their own interpretation.
Another common theme is his films’ enigmatic titles.
Reygadas hates titles, but realizes they’re a necessary
evil. He wanted to call Japan Untitled, like some of his favorite
works of art, but couldn’t. Thought it would be
“pretentious and horrible.” He finished the film,
thought it was about light coming after dark and the cycles in
life, like the sun rising again. Three countries came to mind:
Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Ultimately, he thought Japan had the
most significance to rising sun in the minds of an audience so he
went with that.Japan follows a character known only as the man
(played by Alejandro Ferretis, whose untimely death at age 59 in
2004 remains shrouded in mystery), a painter from the city
looking to end his own life. He speaks bluntly. When asked in the
opening why he wants a ride to a mountain he responds: “To
commit suicide”. When he meets a religious old woman named
Ascen (Magdalena Flores) and asks to stay at her farmstead, a
loving bond quickly forms. We never understand fully why the man
wants to kill himself. After several unsuccessful attempts at
suicide (the last one featuring a wonderful 360 degree helicopter
shot on the peak of a mountain), the man finds solace in helping
Ascen (her name short for Ascension which she says is short for
Christ ascending to heaven without any help) fend off family
members who want to tear down her barn wall and transport it
elsewhere.
A mood piece that carries a somber tone throughout the
film’s 128 minute running time, Japan is a promising debut
feature from Reygadas, and a great film in its own right. The
relationship– growing strong after the man shares a joint
with Magdalena – between the man and Ascen is touching and
honest, and gives the film a sense of hope that isn’t there
in the beginning. The man’s arc is formed through his
relationship with Ascen. She saves him. With its opening shot of
a traffic-congested highway showing human lemmings en mass
(echoing Tarkovsky’s Solaris), and storyline about a city
dweller finding peace in the country, Japan is a film about a man
going back to nature and discovering that life is for the living.
Battle In Heaven (Batalla en el ciello) is Reygadas’
controversial follow-up to his debut. The film came out in 2005,
and caused quite a stir throughout its festival run. Its opening
shot of a beautiful young woman named Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz)
performing oral sex on an obese, older man named Marcos (Marcos
Hernandez) is certainly shocking, but really only because the act
isn’t simulated. Those not used to seeing such things in
feature films will be taken aback, but the act has meaning to the
entire film. This is no gimcrack to pull in a curious audience
looking for cheap thrills or beautifully shot pornography.
Non-simulated sex is becoming more common in films these days.
Two prominent features that spring to mind are Vincent
Gallo’s 2003 film The Brown Bunny (where Chloë Sevigny
services Gallo’s character for real in the climactic scene)
and John Cameron Mitchell’s 2006 film Shortbus (featuring
all manner of gay, straight, bi, and orgy non-simulated sexual
encounters).
From the opening shot, the audience is thrown into Marcos’
point of view. He is confused, guilt-ridden and not the most
loquacious of characters. He seems to be numb to life, walking
through his days with cold distance to all that surrounds him.
Again, Reygadas employs a wonderful shot high in the sky showing
Mexico City’s highways, the roads forming a triangular shape
that shows the city’s drones moving to their everyday
destinations. Marcos and his wife kidnapped a child, and though
we never get details or see the child on screen, we learn the
child has died. Kidnapping is a huge problem in Mexico City, but
unlike, say, Tony Scott’s big budget, action and
testosterone-fueled revenge film Man On Fire, which uses this as
a shortcut to propel its lead character (played by Denzel
Washington) into a series of extremely violent vignettes,
Reygadas uses this issue as a means to explore guilt.
The issue is the background, hovering over the narrative. In the
foreground of Battle in Heaven is a character study about a man
whose world has been thrown into a tailspin. Marcos is a
middle-aged chauffer, driving his wealthy employer’s
daughter anywhere she pleases, but usually to the brothel she
works at for no other apparent reason than pure boredom with her
upper-class life. At the brothel we learn that Ana and Marcos
confide in each other things they don’t share with anyone
else. Here we see Marcos confessing his crime to Ana. She tells
Marcos to turn himself in. Reygadas got the idea for the film
when he saw a man going on a pilgrimage. The man had no shirt on,
just pants and a bag over his head. He was walking towards a
church and that image inspired the film. Reygadas knew where his
film was heading; he just had to find out how his characters were
going get there. The climax of the film features this very image
as Marcos seeks salvation for his
sins. The final act of the film is haunting; leaving an
impression on the viewer that will last for sometime. Marcos
commits a ghastly act of violence that puts him on this final
path, setting up the climax. The few moments of violence in this
film feel real, never sensationalized but still brutal.
The film’s title, again very enigmatic and open to
interpretation, came from a passage in the bible Reygadas read.
Battle In Heaven is a powerful film that shows Reygadas’
feeling on his home city. In an interview he mentioned how
Dostoyevsky didn’t set out to explain Russia, but was
interested only in his characters. His characters happened to be
Russian, and because he knew his characters so well, in the end
as a byproduct he would end up talking about Russia as well. That
is what Reygadas set out to do with this film, and he achieved
it. Too often the obvious and controversial aspects of the film
are discussed. Yes, the sex is real onscreen, but never cloying.
It is there to service the characters and narrative. Battle In
Heaven is yet another step (and a beautiful film on its
own)towards Reygadas’ best film Silent Light.
No better example of Reygadas’ respect for his audience is
more apparent than in Silent Light. He lets the film breathe,
taking in the beautiful and lush Mexican landscape – the
halcyon farmland, rolling hills and mountains, the tranquil blue
sky – in long takes that begin on the outside looking into
the subject of the frame, with the camera slowly pulling in to
reveal the inside. It’s a fantastic motif in the film, and
it shows Reygadas’ maturation behind the camera. “Most
films are too short, or too fast,” Reygadas said at the Q
& A following the film’s screening. “I need that
time to see everything I need to see in the frame.” Nearly
the entire film is made up of Reygadas’ footage he shot. The
finished film contains 200 shots, and Reygadas shot 210 total
(using one camera). He creates his films on camera, not as much
in the editing (Natalia Lopez, the director’s wife, was the
editor on this film). He said his method for filming is
“very Hitchcockian.” After the script is done he
already has the film planned out in his head.
Reygadas said Silent Light is a film about confusion and
contradictions. It follows a family of Mennonites (again
non-actors playing their fictional alter-egos) in northern
Mexico’s Chihuahua state, focusing on the father, named
Johan (played wonderfully by Cornelio Wall Fehr), as his guilt
builds because of an affair he is having with Marianne (Maria
Pankratz). The characters speak in Plautdietsch, the Mennonite
native language. Johan feels guilty because he wants to be a good
man to his family and his wife Esther (Miriam Toews). Esther is
aware of the affair, but lives with it. The film has an
unforgettable climax building around a miraculous event that I
won’t speak a word of here, but rest assured it is magical.
Reygadas wanted archetypes for his characters: the man, the
lover, the father, a wife, kids and a friend. This is so he could
focus on the love story, showing how Johan has a divided heart.
He truly loves both women; they both give him what he needs. The
film is also about Johan’s sin. This is not a religious
story, though it may seem that way given the film’s setting.
“This is a human story. I just wanted him to be a good man.
You don’t have to be religious to feel for others. Very
often it’s the other way around.” Johan is conflicted
throughout the film. Reygadas gives us subtle hints at his
ever-growing guilt in small pieces of naturalistic dialogue. Like
when Johan asks his father not to mention his affair to his
mother during a touching, sub rosa father-son talk. The father
responds later by saying, “I wouldn’t like to be in
your shoes, but somehow I also envy you.” Reygadas wanted
his characters to be more human than dogmatic, capable of doubt.
“Doubt is a great quality that very often fundamentalists
don’t have,” Reygadas said. “I didn’t know
much about the Mennonites five years ago,” said Reygadas.
While shooting Battle in Heaven he took several trips to their
community, and developed relationships with several people. He
decided this was the perfect setting for Silent Light. Mennonite
law prohibits filming of their people, but Reygadas met several
liberal-minded people who welcomed the idea, seeing it as a
chance to preserve their culture.
Shot in 35 mm, and employing “special lenses” from
Russia used often in the 60’s, Reygadas imbues every frame
with a sort of visual poetry. A memorable scene where we are
first introduced to Marianne takes place on a hill. Johan and
Marianne kiss passionately, and as the scene goes on (in one
prolonged take) lens flair appears. What Reygadas liked so much
about his special lenses is he knew the flairs would be
unavoidable, so he embraced them. He and cinematographer Alexis
Zabe decided to use it as expression. “Most people think it
is a technical mistake, but to me they [the lens flair] give
something to the image.”
The use of sound is nothing short of brilliant. Not a single
Foley sound was used in the film. Every sound is either a direct
sound recorded in the environment or directly recorded while the
shot was taken. Sound recorder Raul Locatelli’s work here is
impressive, and it gives the film another layer of atmosphere, in
no short supply in Silent Light, a film consumed by mood and
tone. Reygadas thought of Sleeping Beauty and Carl Dreyer’s
1955 film Ordet while making the film. Dreyer is a huge influence
on Reygadas. But he is no mere epigone. He is a unique voice in
film. Like all filmmakers, other filmmakers and artists influence
him. When I saw Silent Light I immediately thought of Terrence
Malick’s The New World and Days of Heaven, a comparison
Reygadas disagrees with. “A lot of people talk about him
[Malick] regarding this film, maybe because he also shoots the
countryside calmly. There’s too much action in his films.
Too much going on. I appreciate his films, I’m just not keen
on them.” I asked him if Malick was an influence for the
film, his response: Uhh…. No, not really…. Uh…. I
actually…. Yeah, no.”
Reygadas believes that good films are better the more they are
watched. He enjoys finding those new, little nuances in them.
These are the kind of films he wants to make, and so far he has
accomplished this in all three films. Japon, Battle in Heaven and
his masterpiece (for now) Silent Light are films that stay with
the viewer, rewarding on subsequent viewings. He believes film is
much closer to music or painting (than literature), where the art
is not there to tell a story but rather to give a feeling. The
opening and closing scenes in Silent Light would be written: the
sun came up; the sun went down. In the film we are given
something truly cinematic. The image is their to be taken in by
the viewer, and what an image it is. “Rather than taking the
spectator vicariously through someone else’s experience and
coming out of the cinema thinking: what a beautiful dream, I
forgot about life for two hours and now I’m back in my
miserable life. I’d rather respect the spectator and realize
a good spectator comes to cinema to live, not to forget.
That’s living, feeling emotion. That’s why I make
films.”
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