Tardes de soledad

For those of us who long for something different-truly different-Afternoons of Solitude delivers that wish. Films like this are rare, and when they appear, they tend to divide. Albert Serra's latest work is no exception: defiant as a duel under the sun, hypnotic as a silent prayer, and unforgettable as a scar on memory.

Serra takes a risk-and wins-with tightly framed, deeply intimate shots that draw us into the drama unfolding in the sand. These are not mere images, but visions that burn into the retina: the brutal goring, the exact instant the sword seeks its mark. There is violence, yes, and there is blood, but never indulgence; instead, there's a raw, essential beauty that transcends the act itself.

Balanced between art and discomfort, Afternoons of Solitude is a work of cinematic freedom and a total immersive experience. A journey in which any viewer with sensitivity-even without a taste for bullfighting-will find a profound truth, as ancient as the ritual itself.

At first I dismissed this movie, with its repetitive capturing of the spectacle of a Spanish bullfight, where the bull is already injured and certain to be killed in a brutal way. The documentary focuses on the hunter and the hunted, the dance of mortality and winner and loser. While the stadium audience cheers off-camera. The set-up reminded me of movies of Ancient Rome, like Gladiator, where the those who are about to die are thrown to the lions, the lions having the advantage, like the bullfighters here, and the stadium audience sitting in glee, and thrill as to whose blood will be spilled. We, the cinema audience, are also lulled into this dance of death, and the animal grunts (bull and matador), the posturing and angling (bull and matador), the aggression and intimacy of a fight to the death are repeated in various arenas and it is hypnotic. You don't want the matador to be injured, and yet he takes such risks.

So, I said that I almost dismissed this film, but as I have been thinking about it since, I feel Serra has captured very important themes in this very focused matador film. He captures the bravado and judgment and hubris of the hunter (the matador), where the opponent is "bad" and deserves to be killed. Take this male aggression out of the bull-fighting arena and you will see it all around the world, and it is cheered on when it is seen in leaders who belittle the "bad" guy or teach them a lesson. You might say that the animalistic side of human nature that wants blood, revenge and wants to take a victory lap and be applauded for such is captured.

The matador believe he is incredibly courageous ("you've got balls bigger than this stadium"), and his worth comes from this dance of death. I do not support and encourage aggression or bullying, so this was an insight into an atavism of male aggression that is celebrated in Spain in the bullfighting arena, and is perhaps representative of the bloody history of the country as well (the inquisition, the conquistadors killing many in the Americas in the name of their King and God). So, indirectly, Serra might be showing us a part of the soul of Spain and its still preserved rituals based on violence and aggression that are still celebrated.

Albert Serra's Tardes de Soledad documentary sets out to capture the intensity of the Spanish corrida de toros, but its suffocating style strips the art form of meaning. Shot almost entirely in cropped, tightly framed images, the film successfully conveys and amplifies the bull's raw power. Soon enough, though, the device reveals its real function: to make space for Serra's fixation on prolonged close-ups of bulls' death twitches after the sword has been placed.

It feels less like aesthetic discipline than a calculated pretext. By keeping every moment claustrophobic, Serra makes the death throes appear integral to the film's language. If he had shown the lidia in wide, generous shots and then suddenly zoomed in only for the spasms of dying animals, it would have looked gratuitous. Instead, the close crop becomes the default, turning mortality-not artistry-into the film's center of gravity.

The casualties of this approach are glaring. Ninety-five percent of viewers will leave with no sense of the impact Roca Rey has had on the corrida in the decade since his alternativa, no feeling for the emotional weight of a faena, and no grasp of the geometry of the passes or the beauty they create. Key moments vanish, like the way the matador is impacted by jeers of the obnoxious torista afición who reside in tendido 7 at Las Ventas in Madrid. These are layers that make the corrida profound; Serra edits them out of existence.

The repeated Roca Rey "in the van" sequences were dispiriting. In an era when the stomach-turning spectacle of sycophants fawning over US President Trump is unavoidable, watching a cuadrilla indulge in a smaller but no less obvious version of the same behavior was revolting. Whether he encouraged it or simply allowed it hardly mattered-the stench of obsequiousness was overwhelming..

In the end, Tardes de Soledad mistakes narrowness for intensity. It reduces Roca Rey to a cipher, flattens the corrida into a one-note polemic, and leaves the viewer with little more than claustrophobia and fatigue. Anyone new to the art of toreo will leave the documentary having learned little to nothing.

A fine documentary about the world of bullfighting showing the reality of the bullfight, displayng colorful images and stunning close-ups of the two contenders in rhe ring: the torero and the Bull. It exposes the intimate experience of the bullfighter, his religiosity, and adoration of the Virgin Mary, his sacrifice and path to fame, his rites of dress and suit of lights, along with the assumption of the risk of facing a deadly duel as a personal duty, following a tradition that has been sustained por centuries. In fact, bullfighting, as an art form has already been profusely painted and praised by prestigious artists such as Goya, Picasso, Rafael Alberti, and many others. The director himself -who is not a bullfighting enthusiast- said he wanted to film it seriously and objectively, representing an aesthetic challenge for him. He attempts to accept it as it is, and show it in all its rawness and reality, including the gushing blood, as toro as toreador, and the harshness of the Plaza. According to some bullfighting critics, he is credited for portraying that world as it is, the naked truth.

The documentary faithfully portrays the splendid figure of the great bullfighter, Andrés Roca Rey as he faces the bull. His face , his grimaces, his face, as well as bull's bravery with its tirelessness in confronting the opponent in order to gore him. And it definitively shows a certain admiration that develops between bullfighter and beast. According to the director, there was a commmitment of the highest level on the part of the toreador Roca Rey. He states the film has not generated controversy or international rejection and is interesting in its own right as an anthropological document. The movie develops a beauty that emerges intermittently through a violent struggle between a man and a beast, both confronting each other to the death, one with his sword and the other with its sharp horns, a confrontation between animality brutality and human racionality.

The movie is very repetitive and shows gruesome images of bulls being tortured to death. Over and over again. The main character gets praised for his "balls of steel", but obviously has some kind of deathwish. You can't help but question why this still happens today. You can't speak of a documentary, because it doesn't explain anything. Nothing about the history or the culture behind it, let alone the controversy around it. What I did get from the movie is the exhilarating feeling a torero must feel standing so close to an animal that dangerous. But I couldn't see past the stupidity of the practice to begin with. If you want to see this movie, only 30 minutes is enough. The rest is more of the same. There is better stuff to be seen.