My Week in Film #1

This week I watched three films: El Viaje (The Journey), Memoria del Saqueo (Social Genocide) and Bubba Ho-Tep. As one may suspect, two of these were watched for academic reasons (as part of my Latin American Cinema course I’m undertaking) and one was a personal selection.

El Viaje and Memoria del Saqueo are complimentary films by renowned Argentine director/writer/producer/musician Fernando E. Solanas, released in 1992 and 2004 respectively. Both cover similar ground in very different ways.

El Viaje follows the journey of Martin, a teenager raised by his mother and step-father in a remote village ‘at the end of the world’ (or the tip of South America). Whilst academically capable, Martin is rebellious at school and hates his step-father. His uncomfortable home life, coupled with his girlfriend’s decision to abort her child pregnancy without his knowledge, prompts Martin to up sticks and leave in search of his absent cartoonist father.

At this point, the film becomes deeply satirical as Solanas creates an artful critique the Argentinean government (a critique that becomes clearer in Memoria del Saqueo) in a manner much in the style of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. The Gilliam aesthetic is reinforced by the use of still cartoon imagery and surreal landscapes, set pieces and characters, such as the blind eighteen wheeler driver or the flooded streets of Buenos Aires. The literal and metaphorical journey, whimsical surrealism and father-son dynamic also reminded me of Tim Burton’s under-rated Big Fish, surely a recommendation in anyone’s book. The humour is subtle, yet cutting and Martin’s quest to find his father is reserved in its sentimentality.

I would only fault the film on its excessive running time (approaching two and a half hours) and its slight misogynist bent: the few female parts are grossly undeveloped. Martin’s mother has little to say or do in her scant screen time and his emotionally fragile girlfriend is a character whose story should not have been overlooked. Most concerning, however, are Martin’s several imagined visions of his silent ‘dream girl’. Is Solanas really suggesting that the perfect woman is mute?

In contrast to El Viaje’s skewed fantasy vision of Argentina, Memoria del Saqueno is a bleakly real documentary. Opening with gripping footage of the 2001 riots in Buenos Aires, Solanas travels back in time to explain how and why the country came to be in such a state of civil unrest. Solanas, who received six bullets in his legs for in his endeavours to uncover the truth in the filthy mire of corruption, tells us of President Carlos Menem, who would make even the most two-faced of politicians blush with his blatant U-turn from the man of the people in his campaign to the man who privatised Argentina’s oil and gas companies for a pittance, crippling the country economically in the process, when he won presidency. Even his interviewed former cronies, who view ‘betrayal as key to politics’, admit to being shocked at Menem’s ethics. This political corruption and courtship of multinational corporations eventually led to such national deficit that the government seized citizen’s personal savings from their bank accounts, leading to the riots.

The film is brutal in its polemic and the footage of children starving to death on camera is hard to watch, however if you can bear it out, the end provides the viewer with redemption. Many of the satirical references in El Viaje become clear too; the conference of the ‘countries on their knees’ and Dr Frog and Mr Wolf’s tennis match mirroring Menem and Bush Senior’s match, in particular. The film does tend to labour its point (government bad! corporations bad!) and is somewhat of an endurance test and very sobering but for those looking for more than just escapism in cinema, well worth watching.

Bruce Campbell has been promoting his new film My Name is Bruce recently and has been interviewed with personal favourite film critics Jonathan Ross and Mark Kermode (with the ever delightful Simon Mayo - I heartily recommend his podcasts), both of whom mentioned, along with the Evil Dead and Spider-Man (Spider-Men?) trilogies, Bubba Ho-tep. Curiosity adequately piqued by Campbell’s affable good humour, I looked out Bubba Ho-tep and was genuinely impressed. Expecting little more than a humorous B-movie, I was truly surprised to find such quality and even more so to find myself actually quite affected in parts. The central conceit is pure gold, both witty and clever: at the height of his powers, Elvis Presley tires of fame and fortune and swaps lives with a more than willing Elvis impersonator. In the present day, we find him in a nursing home, cancerous and cantankerous, full of regret, but still packing an acerbic wit, superbly embodied by Campbell. Of course, no one believes he really is Elvis, except Ossie Davies, who plays an African American pensioner who in turn believes he is JFK, lobotomised and dyed black. ‘That’s how clever they are!’

All of this would be grand, without the addition of a mummy stalking the halls of the nursing home at night, sucking out souls, who must, inevitably, be defeated by Elvis and JFK. The plot is kept agreeably light, leaving plenty of room for the characters to shine. The ‘special’ effects are charmingly naff, and less of detrimental to my enjoyment than I would have expected. There are some inevitably excellent lines (‘come on, Marilyn Monroe? How was she in the sack?’) and Brian Tyler’s score is outstanding. The only real shame is that budget clearly did not extend to using any of Elvis’ actual songs in the film, but it is to Bubba Ho-tep’s credit that the film does not suffer because of this. I thoroughly recommend a viewing.