Flamenco

This film is entirely musical and dancing vignettes, composed and photographed on a sound stage (actually the public space of a train station converted to a stage for this film). It's beautifully, sparely photographed. If your entire conception of flamenco consists of the images of some lithe guy in a toreador outfit and an austere woman in a lacy black dress with castanets or thumb cymbals in her hands, drumming dramatically with their boot heels, this movie will open up a new view of flamenco.

This film shows a world of flamenco -- singing, dancing and guitarplaying melded into an intense, enclosing and dramatic space. The flamenco presented here is jazz-like and interpretive. Song, guitar and dance are blended in surprising and inventive ways. Song and dance are sometimes a cappella, extending the guitarplaying in subtle and intense "solos" accompanied often by hand-clapping or knuckles rapped on a table. This dancing is purely interpretive, as jazzy and individualized as any modern dance. These dancers have learned the technique but they make the flamenco their own. This is not an abstracted art form like a string quartet sitting in the well of a performance hall.

Nor is this flamenco the flared-skirt performance of athletic divas. Here we see children dancing with their parents; and grandparents demonstrating decisively that flamenco imbues the spirit with a graceful power that does not age.

At the end, we see the form of flamenco symbolically passed through a class of aspiring dancers. But the heart of the flamenco, I suspect, cannot be learned.

The only flaw in this film is likely to lie in the beholder. If you are not fluent in Spanish, the lyrics of the songs are meaningless. They are literally translated in the subtitles (the only "dialog" in the film), but I found the translations distracting. Like a lot of such translations, the literalness often made the powerfully sung lyrics seem trite.

Nonetheless, as the credits rolled at the end, I found myself shaking my head in wonder that just spare, rhythmic guitar, singing in an unknown language and dancing that consisted of as much anticipation as movement could leave me feeling that I had just watched something special. Over and over again.

Saura's love for flamenco (and formidable ability for capturing it on film) is well-established, and here he presents it pure and unadorned. Hundreds of musicians, singers and dancers provide an uninterrupted series of flamenco performances in all its forms and styles. The talent is dazzling and the passion is infectious, it's a marvelous tribute with glorious photography by Storaro, backlighting the performers in warm oranges and cool blues on sparse stages. There is one problem, though. For the first 20 minutes, it's electrifying and exhilarating, and I thought I might be watching a new favorite. But then the next 40 minutes are far too ballad-heavy. Although the material is very good, it kind of sucks the energy out of the room. Anyone who's ever sequenced an album, or even made a mixtape, knows you don't clump a bunch of slow songs together. Fortunately, the remainder of the film is more evenly paced with a much better mix of uptempo and downbeat. Although that slow stretch keeps the movie from being a masterpiece for me, overall I was delighted, and it made me want to pick up my guitar.

This brilliant work by Carlos Saura is a marvel to view.The lighting of the simple sets is stunning while the performers show the development and the history of the flamenco.The music, the dancing and as said before the lighting of the sets are breathtaking. An other companion film to watch would be Carmen by Carlos Saura one of my all time favorites. In Flamenco I would have liked to have seen a little more pair-dancing.

This film could have been quite good if only there'd been some explanation--of the performers, the culture, the songs, the country... Anything. But there was nothing beyond a line or two at the very outset. From that point forward, it was nothing more than music videos. One performance after another, with no more information than the song name provided. As a fan of flamenco who knows very little about the culture it arose out of, I'd have appreciated much more background info. Buena Vista Social Club, a film in the same genre, did this beautifully. It detailed the performers, the history of the music, the songs. Because it did none of this, Flamenco was boring. What is more, the camera work is at times quite awful. Why the extended, extreme tonsil-shot closeups of singers?

This movie is a fantastic piece. You should enjoy the ambience inside of that hall. The dancers and the music is great, it's authentic. This movie is good for everybody how knows that flamenco is a spanish dance. See this movie and you'll know that flamenco is a way of life.