Invasión

Hugo Santiago's 'Invasion' is a film about struggle: the endless struggle of a handful of men against totalitarianism. It illustrates the secret, sometimes vain battle for freedom by depicting a strong, dark and powerful masterpiece with heroic characters who defend their hometowns against mysterious invaders. However, the most striking aspect of the movie is the way it anticipates on History, indeed a decade after the movie was shot, Argentina was to fall in the hands of a cruel military regime. From the electric torture scenes to the stadium ( the very place originally used by the regime to execute the opponents ), everything is unfortunately at the right place. From the artistic point of view, Invasion is beyond reproach, directed by a disciple of Renoir and Antonioni. It really thrills the audience from the beginning to the end; the pace is perfect, action scenes are outstanding ( the overall strategy plan designed by the old man reminded me of Kurosawa's Seven Samourai - Aquilea eventually looks like the small Japanese village). The score is interesting too with eerie noises and a moving tango song whose lyrics are somewhat premonitory. Acting is also amazing, with their cold beauties the characters communicate their fears and hopes which contribute to the 'on the run' atmosphere of the movie. Still, Invasion is neither a documentary nor a propanganda, it is not a political movie either ( at least at first sight ) but it uses the political pattern to deliver a wider message : 'we have to fight but in secret and knowing the fight is endless' Afterall, Invasion is a metaphysical fable, some kind of an Illiade. Cold, pessimistic mysterious but superb, Invasion spawns a reflexion about life,

Highly ambitious and quite atmospheric, but otherwise, a failure. The decision to be 100% vague and ambiguous over pretty much everything which goes on ultimately did more harm than good for me as it prevented me from forming an emotional connection with anyone or anything and left me asking "Why should I care?" constantly. For instance, a character gets shot. We know nothing about that character or the politics/goals of the side they're fighting for, so why should I care about that? The entire first half involves the resistances efforts to steal a truck from the invaders, but we know nothing about what the invaders are planning on doing if they're successful with their goals or even if the resistance fighters are actually the good guys, so why should I care about that? Overall, I was just left emotionally cold and unimpressed by everything since I was given nobody and nothing to latch on to. The closest the film came to moving me were the brief discussions on how the resistance has to save the city, but even this was too vague to go all the way. And yes, I'm aware that giving an explanation to the motives of both sides likely wasn't what the filmmakers wanted to do, so I don't mean for this to be "They should've made the film I wanted them to make" criticism. The film is exactly what they wanted it to be and, considering it has plenty of fans, it seemed to pay off pretty well. I, personally, was unmoved by it though.

Hugo Santiago Muchnick may be the best-kept secret of Argentinean cinema. It is true that his Argentine filmography is minimal, for he, as Frenchified as he was, ended up self-exiled in Paris and almost his whole work was made in Europe. But there is no doubt that he was a great talent, a true avant-garde artist, even if the label today sounds too outworn. Hugo Santiago is an island in Argentinean cinema, if only for his first feature, the masterful «Invasión».

It is true that writers Adolfo Bioy Casares («La invención de Morel») and Jorge Luis Borges («El aleph») contributed to this and a few others of Santiago's films. It is obvious that their concepts and ideas about art influenced the final works. However, when you see a few frames of «Invasión» you know that you are watching the work of a man of cinema rather than a man of letters. Santiago was a man of moving images and autonomous sounds, who induces us into a fascinating fantasy of revolutionary romanticism, its decadence and reemergence as the Phoenix.

Released in 1969 in the old Teatro Central in the city of Panamá, «Invasión» took us all by surprise. So much so that, until yesterday, when I saw it again, I realized that it had been buried in my memory as something exceptional, but that it also made me unable to evoke it or tell its plot, as maybe Santiago, Borges, Bioy Casares and all the others involved in the movie wanted us to end, under the spell of an old fashioned left-wing cell that executed its plans in secrecy and eliminated all vestiges. Maybe it was because of its detachment as an aesthetic proposal, its innovative narrative or its challenge to realism. Back then, the movie was warmly received at the International Film Festival of Panama. I remember with humor that we arranged an interview with the leading actress Olga Zubarry and, when we were in front of her, we could not say a word! That is how dazzled we were.

First part of an unfinished trilogy about the fictitious city of Aquilea, «Invasión» tells us about the activity of several units of the Aquilean Resistance, although it is not clear who or what they are resisting. All we are told is that such actions are necessary before a possible invasion by unidentified forces. Herrera (Lautaro Murúa) receives orders from the leader of the resistance, Don Porfirio (Juan Carlos Paz), while Irene (Zubarry), Herrera's wife, takes part in actions of the Aquileia youth force, who may or may not be allies of the invaders. As a synthesis of the plot, this synopsis does not give you a complete panorama of the visual and aural effect of the film. You have to see it to perceive its privileged place in the history of Argentinean cinema, beyond the well-known merits of «Dios de lo pague», «El exilio de Gardel (Tangos)», «El aura» or «Relatos salvajes». It does not surprise me at all to read that several critics claim that this is the best Argentinean film of all time.

Before making his first work, Hugo Santiago was Robert Bresson's assistant for seven years, during which he witnessed the emergence of new cinemas in France, Italy, the UK, Poland and Czechoslovakia. In those years, the filmmaker watched the works of the great masters of the time, so it is not strange to see the influence of Antonioni's «Eclisse», Godard's «Alphaville» or Wajda's «Popiól i diament». In Santiago's film there are also echoes of classic Russian literature and even elements from the James Bond series, with fast persecutions and characters' heroic postures. Santiago did not follow the Bressonian practice of using actors as models, but allowed the cast to make true creations of tragic beings, trapped in an oppressive political plot.

Today, 50 years after its creation, what I find more fascinating is the three writers' visionary perception. «Invasión» presciently anticipated what would happen in Argentina during the years of military dictatorship, when terror emerged at home. Here the invaders are equal to the Aquileans, so the worst enemies of the community are people who come from the same community. They may belong to a different social class, have other phenotypes and faces, use different brands of cars or clothes, but in the end they are just the same breed. The traitors to the collective longings are "from home". We also see how (in 1969) the authors described the way the "invaders" tortured the resistance with cattle prod and beat people in stadiums, as it would happen years later.

In statements made to the press, co-author Bioy Casares drew a parallel between Aquileia and Troy, as a city corroded from inside. a city that devoured its children. However, in the resolution of the work, there is hope and a change of forces is promptly executed, in an eternal return to the starting point of the search for truth, as Argentina has been forced to do so many times.

Photographed in black and white with the usual skill and art of another exile, maestro Ricardo Aronovich («Providence», »Le souffle au coeur», »Le bal», «Missing»), the soundtrack is also a unique factor: at the beginning, when listening to steps to the fore and dubbed dialogues in a soundtrack entirely created a posteriori, I said to myself, "What is this? What happened to the sound effects editor?" As the film progressed, I realized that it is the strategy of the composer and sound designer, Edgardo Cantón, in a time when the term "sound design" was not heard of. In addition to precise musical commentaries (and a very good musical number, «Milonga de Manuel Flores», composed by Aníbal Troilo with lyrics by Borges), Cantón made a dense sound string of voices, dialogues and premonitory squawks, overwhelming screams, machinery and crawling feet following one another, sometimes in a completely autonomous fashion, divorced from the image. All the elements were combined in an effective and forceful way until the end.

The experience of «Invasión» was not an isolated postmodern incursion without continuity: on the contrary, Hugo Santiago made several feature films in France, like «Les autres» (1974), co-written with Borges and Bioy Casares; «Écoute voir...» (1979) with Catherine Deneuve; a number of «audiovisual objects», as he himself called a series of works on art and its creators' biographies. Of the planned trilogy, Santiago could only complete «Les trottoirs de Saturne» (1986), with a script by Argentinian writer Juan José Saer, in which a musician from Aquilea is exiled in Paris. By 2009 he had the script for the final entry, «Adiós», written in solitary, but the project was postponed in favor of other projects and in the end Santiago could not make it, as he died on February 27, 2018.

The screenplay for "Invasion" was written by literary giant Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Boi Cesares (whose short story "Blow-Up", had been made into a film by Michelangelo Antonioni 3 years earlier). Invasion takes place in Buenos Aires, where a clandestine group of friends, businessmen, and enthusiastic youth have joined forces to fight off on invasion of their city by unknown forces; men in tan suits.

Like Jim Jarmusch's "The Limit's Of Control", the film gives us only what precious little information we need to move onto the next scene, like an agent on a mission who can't afford to know too much, so that if captured can't be forced to talk. "Go here", "take him", "good luck", "the rendezvous is at midnight on the docks", or "noon at the cafe", are about as declarative as many of the conversations get, usually issued by an old man at headquarters.

Unlike Jarmusch's cool, collected, calm fest, these guys get down to multiple scenes of shoot-outs, scuffles, and interrogation and torture. Why they are fighting, and who the enemy is, is left unanswered, as is why they don't seek help from the "authorities" or even the common man on the street. The city is being taken over slowly, "the trucks are coming in", is a phrase we keep hearing again and again. Imagine the Matrix, without the kung-fu/sci-fi stuff, where there is an eternal cat and mouse game between the Agents and those resisting the agents.

Erasing the specific nature of the enemy could have a very practical explanation like fear of censorship if they give Them or Us an official title. It could also be Borges and Cesares, after living their multiple disappointing rebellions, revolutions, and coup de tats, were weary of easy or convenient dichotomies. Or perhaps like GK Chesterton said of the Iliad, "Life is a battle", and the war will continue on regardless of which particular players strut the stage in fatigues.

Like the Trojan Army (Borges was a huge fan of the Iliad, and Adventure stories), our heroes are doomed to fail, which only gives their cause and epic and glamorous sheen; the final scene depicts a batch of new recruits standing in line to get guns and begin the cycle anew. It's like an abstract mob-film, where cool and charismatic men, light each other on fire, and insist they will die before they talk. There is a documentary like realness that add a tension and weight to the secret wars, which never seems to spill out into the light of day and attention of the general public.

Much screen time is spent just looking at blackness with only lit faces or ghostly eyes, showing the hero's as much in the dark as we the audience. But heroes they are, self sacrificing, dedicated comrades and friends, that we longer really see in modern action heroes, and their play-by their own rules, "did you have to break so much furniture McGarnical?", escapades. Like real covert ops, they are precise, they are also so casual, and at times defeated looking, you might imagine they do this every weekend; one man wants to know how long the mission will take, because has to be home early to meet his wife.

Though well lit and composed with crisp black and white austerity, there is one "magical realist/fantastique' flourish, when the team leader of the heroes, finds himself in an empty building were dozens and dozens and impossible dozens of men in tan suits, emerge seemingly from nowhere and surround him. He is tortured in a football stadium, where I am told, real dissidents and "traitors" were actually tortured and killed. It' doesn't quite live up the hype of the literary giants behind it, but that's a tall order to fill.

It's an interesting and reserved action film, with some great suspense and encouraging of the same kind of existential reflection that films like "Blow Up" and "Limits Of Control" demand. An obscure, but enjoyable French New Wave inspired, curious allegory from Argentina, about life's struggles which are always in secret, and always endless.

Jorge Luis Borges was a great writer. Adolfo Bioy Casares was a good writer with infrequent flashes of very good. Occasionally, they wrote together. Curiously, the quality of their joint work always sank lower than the quality of each writer's output; they seemed to cause each other to lower their standards. The story for this movie is an example. It narrates the resistance of a small group against an invasion and takeover of an imaginary country in an abstract, bloodless and totally unrealistic fashion. The dialog has been written by Borges and the director Hugo Santiago. The lines are frequently stilted and literary; a great writer is not necessarily a good screenwriter. The actor's delivery of the dialog tends to the monotonic. The direction is uneven; the movie proceeds briskly at times, but it has very slow stretches. Action scenes are not very believable.

What makes this film watchable is the extraordinary black and white cinematography by Ricardo Aronovich; in spite of its virtuosity it never interferes with the action. After a brilliant career in Argentina Aronovich moved to Europe where he became one of the best cinematographers in the world.

The subject of this film (and some scenes) caught the attention of the military dictatorship that took power in Argentina in 1976. Parts of the original negative were destroyed. The version we watch now is made from the surviving negative and positive copies.