Moebius

I know I enjoyed this when it first came out, but I had entirely forgotten how well-made it is. In the screenwriter's own words, "Moebius" is the perfect machine. The light! The colors! The tracking shots! The sound design! The director general's giant glass-topped table! Combined with the bold proposition of an architect chasing a wayward train lost in the underground maze that is the subway system of Buenos Aires, the director's attention to detail makes for a holistically surreal experience. One guy who's sure to give you the creeps is the ancient, wailing lift boy taking our hero, Daniel Pratt, down to the university basement. Needless to say, the basement doubles as a subway station. On a forgotten line. Heading nowhere. As Pratt says, it's a strange game. Now Annabel Levy, in the part of his preteen sidekick Abril, I wonder what she's up to these days. It seems she hasn't made a movie since. Chances are she disappeared from the set, never to be met with again. What a shame.

Just saw this and on balance thought it was a very good and unique film. Would like to add that the cinematography and lighting are excellent, and the locations chosen are amazing. The atmosphere created by these two things alone made me enjoy the film - I could pretty much forgive the strange storyline. This is coming from someone who loved "Pi" and "Primer" - good scifi must have plausible science and in my opinion, and this is where "Moebius" fell short.

Subterranean Buenos Aires is an interesting and probably challenging place to shoot a film - but these students pulled it off admirably. There are some clever camera angles and tracking shots, and what looks like some post-production that brings some rich colours to the film.

Recommended as an unconventional sci-fi, in an unconventional time and place.

As every math undergraduate knows, a Möbius (or Moebious) strip is made as follows. You take a paper strip and glue the ends together; before gluing you rotate one of the ends hy 180 degrees. The Möbius strip has some intriguing properties. Imagine two ants standing at a point of the surface. The first walks along the strip while the second stays in place. Eventually, the first ant will reach the starting point but on the other side of the surface, thus it wiii be invisible to the second ant. This is the origin of the script; only, instead of an ant we have a subway train circulating on rails that sit on a Möbius strip or some higher dimensional version thereof.

Out of this bit of geometry and some cinematic phantasy, director Gustavo Mosquera R. (the R stands for Roral) and his scriptwriters have assembled a taut science fiction film that, unlike others of the genre, does not require excessive doses of suspension of disbelief. The scenario is the Buenos Aires subway system and much of the action happens in its vast, labyrinthine tunnels, underground galleries and workshops that at times seem to represent the Underworld, the kingdom of Hades of Greek mythology.

The Universidad Nacional del Cine (National University of Cinema), founded in 1991 in Buenos Aires teaches every artistic and technical aspect of making movies. It has has been responsible for (and financed) several major projects, this movie being the first. Director Mosquera, a professor at the University enlisted a group of more than forty students that were divided into teams (direction, production, script, art, cinematography, montage, sound) and were instrumental n all aspects of the making of the movie. It was filmed in actual, old fashioned stock and resulted in a very polished product which has attained international recognition (e. G. the MoMA festival New Directors, New Film in 1997) and has already had a remake, Moebius 17 (2005). Perhaps the disappearing train (and the authorities pretending it never happened) is an allegory for the many Argentines disappeared during the military dictatorship of 1976 - 1982.

Moebius, the movie, has been around for a while now, and has a very good reputation. But this movie is definitely overrated. Though the pitch is very good, it suffers from various flaws that spoil the quality of the movie. First, the plot is obscure and is sometimes hard to follow. Mosquera chose to deal with the desaparecidos issue. It is a very sensitive issue in Argentina and therefore it is courageous of him. But he had room for criticism and his approach of this subject is rather cold. He could have chosen to insist on the political aspect of his movie but instead he chose to develop the dry philosophical/Borges side of it. And this side is not enhanced by the rhythm of the movie which is particularly jerky between underground scenes and outdoors scenes. It would have deserved more fluidity and even spinning to deal with that moebius strip issue. On that point, that choice seems incoherent. Next point the characters, they are cartoons. They act most of the time on one single level whereas we could have expected more subtility. For example, the subway's director is an impulsive, grotesque, slow-thinking character. Would you really expect that from the director of the subway of Buenos Aires? The only character who keeps her mystery is the one of the young girl, the others are only stereotypes. Finally, it lacks poetry and sensibility. Los desaparecidos, the nostalgia floating around, the young girl could have induced more emotion and it is, to my mind, the main failure of that movie. You never feel concerned by the characters or the story. Nevertheless, some interesting points can be stressed. Regarding the budget and the crew this film is rather good and moreover the light used creates a very interesting claustrophobic atmosphere. Finally, the idea would have deserved a better treatment. It is a shame.

I saw this film at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York a couple of years ago. I've never seen anything quite like it! It's not quite science-fiction, yet it's as off-the-wall and fantastic as any conventional sci-fi flick. You know you're in for a new type of experience when a film's hero is the practitioner of an obscure branch of mathematics.

Any description of the plot would only diminish it. It's astonishing to think that this was basically a student project. Someone has to get this film released onto videotape fast, so that more people can get the opportunity to enjoy its metaphysical pleasures....