Zama

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.

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.

Period cinema often lacks authenticity, a sense of faux deprivation when such scenarios are encountered at best. Not here however, where the discomforts and hardships experienced by the colonial Spanish and their conquests leaves no room for misplaced romanticism. To extract the most from this piece I suspect you already need an interest of it, to have read the book upon which it is based (and enjoyed it), to be an avid follower of those times and of that era. It's elegantly performed, believable and honest but you can easily be distracted if you're engagement light begins to fade and dim, needing only to do so by a fraction to initiate the disconnection.

Daniel Giménez Cacho is the eponymous corregidor who has long since served his King in a Spanish colony in South America, hoping that he will soon earn a promotion and be able to leave this fairly squalid existence. He has a wife and child and to get back to them he is prepared to do pretty much anything, but gradually the man realises that he is but a pawn in a game being played by his superiors - who don't really want to be there either - that plays well to the narcissism and absolutism of a provincial administration that endowed the governor with kinglike powers to be used in petty and vengeful ways. Though "Zama" is more decent than many, there is is still a stark superiority complex amongst the conquerors whose treatment of the non-Christian and highly superstitious native population borders on the barbaric. There's a good Scots expression about being "king of your own midden" and Cacho et al deliver that sense well, especially when clad in their ill-fitting wigs and heavy European garments that further emphasise that they just don't belong here. Will he get his promotion? In many ways the production reminded me of Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" (!982) as it really does encapsulate onto film the hostility of the terrain and the environment in which "Zama" lives. It also depicts the natives as little better than savages whilst the narrative itself reveals that they are nowhere near as subjected as their European masters might like to think. Morally and physically it's an uncomfortable film to watch, but that's not a bad thing. It makes us think a little about the building blocks of empire and though it does plod along at times, is quite an interesting depiction of a man who is just as trapped as any he supervises.

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.