puteolum

There's no doubt that Erice is one of the best Spanish directors ever, and each film he's made is an absolute masterpiece. I shall not comment anything about the plot, the acting, not even about cinematography. I'm writing this post in order to give IMDb's users a little information which, I think, may solve some questions about this film (why its plot is so "episodic"? why the DVD copy seems a low-quality one? etc): well, actually "El Sur" is an unfinished work! The production was stopped due to money trouble, and Erice wasn't able to complete his film with Estrella's travel to the mythical South named in the title. Many years later, Erice himself explained this film's odyssey in a recorded interview for the Spanish TV.

First of all, "La chanson de Roland" is a great film. But, unfortunately, it's quite an unknown one. Unlike other "medieval" films (e.g. Anthony Mann's "El Cid") there's no "sword-battle-american-pulp-shit" stuff, but a hard intellectual effort in order to offer us a realistic version of the European Middle Ages. And also an extraordinary respect for the text it is based on, which proves that there's an exact point between plain translation into images and "commercial" or "updating" stupidness (but you must be clever enough to find it!). The director seems to know this ancient French literary masterpiece as deeply as sir Lawrence Olivier knew Shakespeare's greatest plays. Last but not least, Kinski is superb, either as the poor "jongleur" who's traveling to Santiago de Compostela with his mates, or Roland, the hero from the story he tells during their pilgrimage. I'd recommend this film to any viewer, and specially to teachers who'd like to find an easy, powerful way to show their students how "different" and fascinating the Middle Ages can be.