Zama

I read several good reviews about Zama, including some friends recommended me as an excellent movie, however, I only found imperfections, a boring movie for almost two hours and nothings happens, unlikely what looks like a great production it ends on an amount of resources without taking advantage. Too many mistakes, particularly with the spelling, why the natives do not have any accent? or even "the colonial" does not speak proper, poor conversations, bad timing, many mistakes from art department, fake and poor costume design, the director does not take advantage of the beautiful environment, even the sound is bad... just a few fake birds, in the beginning, the acting of Lola Dueñas was good, the rest of the cast does not shine at all, especially Juan Minujin so sad acting, when he speaks you cant understand what is he saying!

For a long time did not saw people leaving the cinema complaining... Such a shame Lucrecia Martel used a masterpiece novel from Antonio Di Benedetto, and made this meaningless and snob movie.

Martel is a master in narrating boredom, silent craving and hot weather. Much like "La ciénaga" this film is a delight of image and sound, filled with thoughtful details that accurately transport the viewer to a state of mind. It might bear down a little too much but it might just as well make you forget were you are for two hours. In the end it´s worth the pain.

By focusing on officer Zama the more ambitious social or historical commentary is made almost on its own, leaving small excerpts here and there of a much larger and complicated colonial system. The plot is the man and his attempt on staying by leaving, or being by disappearing. Not sure but I feel Martel´s work has more to do with the senses than the mind. Once you dive in it´s definitely a pleasure.

Absorbing and deeply unsettling, I enjoyed this movie but found it difficult to follow. Having not read the novel and being unfamiliar with Spanish colonial history, there was probably quite a bit I missed due to lack of education on the subject. However, I came out of the theater feeling as though I was covered in a deep tropical sweat. Like The Witch (2015), it immediately places the viewer in the film. Zama is accurate in its slow pace as a period drama on a tropical island during a time when letters from Spain took FULL YEARS to reach the colonies, and these days standard viewers may have trouble maintaining focus on the travails of one man's experience for almost 2 hours. Bursts of action actually woke older people up in the audience of the theater where I viewed it. Zama was marketed to U.S. audiences with a quickly-edited, intense trailer that had me itching to see it, while the film itself seems to have left more people scratching their heads. I'm looking forward to a second viewing, though preferably not on another humid, ninety-degree day.

The costumes, cinematography, etc do create a self-contained but claustrophobia-inducing world. The random sounds, strange glances, etc make one wonder if it is all just some inside joke in a pointless world. And, so much attention is on the insecure zama & the supercilious governor that there isn't even any real exploration of day-to-day life.

All in all, one of the strangest films ever.

Poor Don Diego de Gama. Both parents Spanish, but he's never been to Spain, as he is frequently snobbily reminded by the Spanish-born residents in his 1790s Argentina back country town. He's a bureacrat serving a king 6000 miles away, unable to decide anything by himself, a fish in water (in a ruling metaphor) who can't live in a wet place. He wants to leave but can't, because everything is on hold. Will a military expedition bail him out? Bitterly totally ironic, structured around off camera sounds that are never what hearers think they are. I'm now hunting down the 1956 novel by Antonio_di_Benedetto.