Thesis - Morte ao Vivo

This film is an efficient thriller from Spain. It deals with the popular urban legend of "snuff" films (films which depict a real-life murder committed purely for the sake of the film).

The plot involves a young film student Angela (Ana Terrant) who is doing a thesis on cinematic violence. To research her thesis she seeks out the most extreme violence films she can find and accidentally stumbles upon a snuff film depicting the torture and murder of a fellow student from her university. She soon starts investigating the film.

The film is well-made and well-acted with several effective scares and twists. It's main message is that the people who watch violent films are in some way accomplices to the violent acts that they watch. This is an old point that has been made several times before. It also deals with the attraction of the forbidden. For example, in the opening scene, Angela goes to see a dead body on a railway track, partly because she has been told not to. Just when she, and the audience, are about to see the body she is stopped. In another scene, Angela is looking away from the snuff film but takes a quick look when she is told not to.

Tesis is a film about a film student writing an assignment on violence on film, which is appropriate because Tesis is itself, an assignment written by Alejandro Amenábar on violence and the state of the Spanish film industry. Amenábar has packed the film with nods towards the industry, and the reasons why it isn't working and this ties in excellently with the central theme of violence. The director professes that Spain's film industry will not be a success until it gives the people what it wants - and that theory in it's purest form is snuff films. Snuff films don't have any production values and exist purely to please their audience on an aesthetic level - and the snuff industry in this film is in a boom period! The idea of violence and why we find it is fascinating has made the base for many films, and it serves this one excellently too. The scene at the start sums all up; we open in a train station where someone has committed suicide. The station guards are trying to ensure that nobody sees the horror, and yet there's scores of people surrounding the tracks and Amenábar makes sure that even you - the viewer - want to survey the horror for yourself.

I don't know how successful Tesis was in it's native Spain, but it's certainly one of the best films to come out of the country in recent memory, and a lot of the reason for that is that the director has heeded his own advice and given the audience what they want. Rather than try and be deep and complex like many other foreign films, Tesis is a straight thriller, not unlike what would come out of America's thriving industry, and the fact that Amenábar has knowingly accepted what his film is and hasn't tried to make it any more than that does it no end of favours. The film follows a relaxed pace, and the basic structure follows a mystery, which is being unravelled by two students; Angela, the one doing the thesis and Chema; someone she met because of his infamous love for violent films. The way that Amenábar keeps the film flowing steadily ensures that we are really able to get into the mystery, and this makes the film far more thrilling overall. The film is about snuff films, but it shouldn't be mistaken for one itself. The focus is often kept away from violence, and the director only shows us just enough of the snuff to whet our appetites.

The film's main point is to show us the mystery, but the characters are never made to take a backseat. The two central figures are given time to grow as people so that we can really get to know them, and even feel for them. In many thrillers, the characters and the mystery can't be weighed up evenly; but despite the fact that he's only a young filmmaker, Amenábar has shown his brilliance by doing it to perfection. The characters actually compliment the mystery, in fact, because at times it flows because of who the characters are. This really allows the film to become compelling, and this is also where most of the true greatness lies. The characters are brought to life by a great cast of young actors. The beautiful Ana Torrent takes the lead role, and is joined by débutant Fele Martínez, who plays her opposite number. These two have an awkward chemistry, and this is capitalised on brilliantly. The third lead is played by Eduardo Noriega, who would go on to make a splash in Amenábar's Open Your Eyes a year later.

Tesis doesn't get mentioned all that often in discussions about great horror/thrillers - and I really have no idea why. This is a first rate film, and really shows its cast and director's talent. The Spanish film industry may be on the decline - but it wont be if they can pump out a few more films like this one!

A promising director: it's what I thought after the screening of Amenabar's first feature. There is a compelling story told with bright creative ideas.

Eventually I felt the first part of the movie was really great and the following went a little under. Sure, it is more difficult to bring all sorts of things together after you built up an exciting suspense. Still you don't feel bored once you are getting to know what it is really all about, but you got more free 'RAM space' to think it over. Perhaps accelerating the rhythm would have kept Tesis on the same high level of suspense. Perhaps it would have been a mistake to change the pace.

Among things you can take away with you is the background theme about our attraction for the morbid. It opens and closes the movie and really gives it one further dimension - one could say it's a bit didactical but it's a least flaw for a first major effort.

Next step Senor Amenabar: a little less personal work (as compared with the experimental Abre los ojos) but still something personal (The Others is the least interesting work so far).

Tesis is one of the finest Spanish films of the last 10 years. God help us if Tom Cruise remakes this first Amenabar gem as he has Abre los ojos> Vanilla Sky coming soon, blech! Using the iconic gaze of Ana Torrent--see her at 6 in Spirit of the Beehive or at 10 in Cria!-- Amenabar makes an obvious but still gripping statement about modern society's facination with violence in the media. Using phenomenal tracking shots, cross-referenced pov and suspenseful tension to maximum effect, he and his cast convert what could have been a hack DePalma style Hitchcock ripoff into art. An awareness of contemporary Spain certainly helps, as much that we Americans consider passe was fairly new over there at the time (not in 2001, alas.) Fele Martinez at his best, too.

First effort by now affirmed Spanish director Amenebar, Tesis starts brilliantly (with a magnificent mix of music and images) and it develops perhaps too slowly and with a unsatisfying ending - at least for a mystery lover - butt it is for a rest a perfect machine explaining how a movie works, how it captures the attention of the viewers. Its aim and final analisys of the movie event and how violence is the basis of today's society could be debatable, but Amenebar has a gift to take good script and turn them in masterpieces.