Historia del miedo

Fear, as the title suggests is at the forefront of Benjamin Naishtat's film. The film portrays fear and its reasons, through the lives of different people in the form of chapters. The is set in Argentina as a heat wave and built up smoke brings about anxiety which at least initially gets your attention though after a while the film runs the risk of becoming silly showcasing random fear which is exactly what happens when the light goes off. "History of Fear" relies on meticulous sound design to set the stage in scenes where many will find themselves flailing for sufficient context. Just how effective is this austerely conceived work at actually generating anxiety? It depends on many factors, but given that the director relies almost entirely on suggestion, the burden falls on the viewers themselves.

I saw this film at the Berlinale 2014, where it was part of the official Competition. I was a bit prepared by watching the press conference beforehand and reading the synopsis on the festival website, but still I could not make heads or tail out of it. There is no plot or story line whatsoever. The core topic seems to be that these people are continuously afraid for invisible enemies. The dichotomy between "us" and "them", separated by a fence, totally failed to come across. The scenes were too confused to get this message. I saw the hints as outlined in the synopsis, like for example the hole in the fence. I rationally see that it stands for a bypass in the them/us border line, but its implied scariness went past me, and so did the urgency to have it repaired.

After a while we were able to distinguish some characters who appeared in more than one scene, apparently important for the plot (which plot?), but what tied them together remained unclear throughout. I can imagine that it is scary when all lights going out at once. Unlike in previous scenes where it happened for only a short while, there was an important scene near the end where it took a long time before power was restored. During such a blackout every noise can be deemed suspicious, especially when you are routinely on your toes already. What we saw happening during said blackout, however, was confusing and it was unclear all the time who was who and on which side they were on.

The background story that the government used fear in previous years as a means to keep control, was not conveyed to us in the film itself, but only known by those having read the synopsis or watched the press conference. Such crucial information should be an integral part of the actual film itself, and an extra 10 minutes would not have hurt on the current running time of only 80 minutes. As it is now, we viewers are left in the dark (proverbial, no pun intended) due to missing background information, though it all may be very obvious for Argentinians. It makes this film worthless for world wide distribution, and thus unnecessary.

I don't suppose the filmmakers ever thought this movie would make a tour of the world (or see the cinema light in Berlin, for the International Festvial there), but maybe they should have expected that. Whatever the case, a bit more background information would have come a long way. The viewer will figure things out at some point, but without any hints to begin with, this is hard to swallow.

The intentions are good and maybe an explanation would have felt redundant to people familiar with the situation depicted (you get a bit of a documentary feeling while watching this). So you could also take this as a strong point for the movie. Speaking generally though, the movie lacks focus and pace, which is a shame, because it does have something to tell