Araya

"Araya" is a movie that makes you want to cry... it is so beautiful in its black and white and its simpleness that it's an equivalent of Neorealism but without the sadness. This movie shared the Cannes Award with none other than "Hiroshima, mon amour", althought it has had less luck in becoming a well known film. Its director founded the Cinemateca Nacional (a place where one can see many good old movies) and is also President of Fundavisual Latina, so although she hasn't directed anyome she continues to work on cinema.

You'll never look at a Morton's container the same way. What comes through most vividly in this strange documentary is the tedium and monotony of the two jobs...salt mining and fishing...on the peninsula of Araya. Unfortunately, about halfway through, perhaps due to the droning tones of the high school science class level narrator or the way the film maker has his subjects walk zombie like throughout the entire film, this enervation begins to affect the viewer (well, at least this viewer). Give it a B minus, mostly for the awesome, surreal cinematography. And please pass the pepper.

Stunning black and white cinematography, and a documentary that truly transported me into the rugged lives of the Venezuelan laborers on the Araya peninsula, who mined the sea for salt for 450 years in much the same way we see here. The work is under scorching conditions and frankly pretty brutal, but every family member has their task and diligently performs it, day in and day out. The film takes a 'poetic realism' approach to the depiction, which has the benefit of the narrator taking the larger view of it all and imbuing it with a wonderful sense of grace. It has the disadvantage that questions we might ask are left out, such as where these people get their clothes or corn, and perhaps more importantly, what they themselves feel about their lives, what their hopes and dreams are, and what their views are of the modernization we see looming in the final few minutes (but unfortunately not expanded on). In short, it would have been nice to hear them speak. Despite that, it's a real work of art, unique and with images that will stay with me. It's a damn shame that director Margot Benacerraf did not make more films, because she really knocked it out of the park with this one.

So the second film I have seen at the 2009 London Film Festival, was bizarrely (for a film made in 1959), the UK premiere. This movie played at Cannes in 1959, but since then pretty much disappeared, at least in the English language world. It's a Venezuelan film, made by a lady called Margot Benacerraf, she made this and one other film before ceasing film-making entirely and entering into the cultural bureaucracy of Venezuela, founding for example the Cinemateca Nacional.

The film is shot on the peninsula of Araya, which is basically dead land abutting onto a salt marsh and then the sea. The land doesn't support anything, there's practically no rainfall, most of the land is not much different from baked bones and dust. There is in one part of the peninsula what is described as a forest, but is too puny too justify that term, arid brittle branches primordially struggling to live. For the inhabitants of the peninsula this is their only supply of wood.

So in Araya, there are only really two professions, you're either a fisherman or a salinero (salt miner). The salineros cut mine from the salt marshes and bring it to the shore, they get 50 cents for a 140 pound basket of salt, which they have to crush to a powder and clean. They do all this without the aid of machinery. Because salt is toxic when handled day in day out they often get ulcers all down their exposed skin.

It's a very simple monotonous life, and whole families are involved in the human conveyor process of bringing the Arayan salt to where it can be loaded for delivery.

It's shot very well, and very poetically, there's also a voice-over that follows the movie the whole way through. I think the voice-over occasionally became more sombre and poetical than the subject matter demanded. I think there's also an extent where it's a false documentary, at least I was feeling suspicious about that, it seems a lot of the scenes are being done for the camera. They film the entire movie almost without reference to machinery, only to have it appear quite conspicuously at the end. So the movie well may have been shot as a time capsule to preserve the way of life that had gone before pre-machinery and was coming to an end. It would be better I think if they had maybe more conspicuously framed it like that at the start. That's a little unfair, I mean the way they did it was good, but it felt deceptive.

Whilst some of the poetry is a little overwrought, there was a great moment where this woman, who was in charge of the scales had her eyes described as being hard and bright like the salt, and then when she is back in the pueblo, they are soft and bright. The poet got that spot on, her eyes did look exactly like that.

The way the cemetery is decorated in the movie is really poignant as well. So I think this film is well worth watching. It has recently been restored by Milestone, and I think there is a fundraising effort going on in the US at the moment, lead by Margot Benacerraf (still alive!). It may well be released on DVD by Milestone in R1 over the next couple of years.

Margot Benacerraf made this documentary about the hard and tedious life of workers in Venezuela who dry out and then transport salt from their marshes. It's backbreaking work and goes on day after day with no end. Not surprisingly, it makes for some VERY tedious and dull viewing. What makes it even worse is that the film often is very artsy (such as the first seven minutes of the film during which there is no narration AND the camera seems to focus on anything but the salt or the workers). Certainly this is not a film to be enjoyed by the average viewer (they'll hate it) but is best seen as an ethnographic documentary about a tough way of life back in 1959. I have no idea if this sort of work continues to this day. Nice camera-work (when it's not focusing on clouds, cacti or other irrelevant stuff) but also a film that defies my ability to give it a numerical score. And, it also bored me to tears.