Gael García Bernal

Desierto (2015)

André Crous

Set on the United States–Mexico border, Desierto tracks a group of illegal immigrants fighting for their lives against the harsh environment and an even more brutal vigilante and his German Shepherd.

desiertoMexico
4*

Director:
Jonás Cuarón
Screenwriters:
Jonás Cuarón
Mateo Garcia
Director of Photography:
Damián Garcia

Running time: 90 minutes

In Desierto, Jonás Cuarón’s evocative depiction of an illegal crossing at the United States–Mexico border, it is difficult to interpret the countless cacti scattered across the barren Arizona landscape as anything other than menacing middle fingers greeting the new arrivals to the country. Not only is this exhausting trek over a period of 36 hours grim, as is to be expected, but it has an aspect of horror thanks to the brutal vigilantism of an white-stubbled, wifebeater-wearing, Confederate flag–sporting gun-toter who has appointed himself and his German Shepherd the true anti-immigration task force.

Opening and closing on similar landscapes on either side of the infamous border, the film takes place entirely in the titular desert that connects the two countries. In so doing, it cuts out the backstories and integration that border-crossing films, from El Norte to Sin nombre, with many others in between, usually include for the sake of completeness. The always dependable Gael García Bernal takes the lead here as one of a dozen immigrants trying to cross into the United States and ultimately becomes the reluctant leader by virtue of determination, survival and luck.

After the small truck that was supposed to transport them breaks down, the group and their handlers walk across the border on foot but soon stare down the barrel of a gun when Sam (an ice-cold Jeffrey Dean Morgan despite the scorching heat) and his trusty dog, Tracker, find them and pick them off one by one. Moises (Bernal), who is lugging a teddy bear with and hopes to reconnect with his son in Oakland, accompanies the slowest at the back of the pack and thus ends up surviving the shoot-out, along with four others.

Cuarón uses his camera with great effect. While some may balk at two or three moments of extravagance (most notably, a fast backward tracking shot when someone is shot in the chest and the beautiful movement of the camera crossing a barb-wire border fence as it shows others doing the same), they never draw too much attention to themselves. Instead, they suggest a vibrant dynamism beneath the mostly desaturated landscape, and in the second example, there is an inherent identification with the immigrants’ journey and plight.

For the entire first half of the film, the focus is relentlessly on the forward movement of the immigrants. Unlike most other films in the genre, there is no small talk between the characters that would flesh out their stories and their reasons for making this perilous journey. Besides, it is a fair assumption to make that none of them would have risked their lives if they didn’t have good reason to do so. This approach towards the characters frees the director up to create significant tension by pitting life against death in almost every single scene.

In this way, we never feel like we are being fed information by a filmmaker but are instead witness to verisimilitudinous events. Unfortunately, the other half of the story, which concerns the half-drunk Sam, is handled with a little less care. Save an early altercation with a border protection officer, Sam never speaks to anyone, except his trusty canine companion (and/or himself). His one-sided conversations can feel a little contrived and ultimately serve little purpose beyond providing a mere outline of a character with a myopic vision of nationalism that is hostile to outsiders (“It’s my home!”), no matter who they are.

Another point on which Desierto scores less than full marks is a scene in the final act when a young woman comes face to face with a rattlesnake. This being Arizona, the encounter is not at all unexpected, but it is a surprise that the film waits so long before showing us a single snake – and then tries to make up for lost time by showing us an entire rhumba all at once.

Bernal is absolutely mesmerising as a young father taking a risk going on this journey but doing so in order to rejoin his family. His character, Moises, is thrust into a game of survival, and while he has to rely on instinct to stay alive, his kindness towards those around him – particularly those who need a helping hand – is evident throughout. Moises’s gentle humanity, coupled with the image and the meaning of the teddy bear, which introduces us to him in the opening scene, makes it easy for the viewer to root for him.

Over the decades, the hot-button issue of border crossings between the United States and Mexico has never really cooled down, and thus Desierto is as timely as ever, particularly given the rumblings from the Oval Office of the recently inaugurated 45th president of the United States. Cuarón, who has to be one of Mexico’s most accomplished young filmmakers, keeps his eye on the ball and seems to relish the challenge of working with a small cast and a single location, not unlike the experience of his director father, Alfonso, on Gravity. As was already apparent in the companion piece to the latter, the short film Aningaaq, Cuarón here again proves himself to be a talented storyteller dedicated to conveying very human stories in the most desolate environments.

No (2012)

André Crous

No 2012Chile
4*

Director:
Pablo Larraín
Screenwriter:
Pedro Peirano
Director of Photography:
Sergio Armstrong

Running time: 118 minutes

“Pinochet could win this vote without cheating, if he wants — that’s what is so terrible”, says José Tomás Urrutia, a socialist who is spearheading the “No” campaign against Chile’s military dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988.

His line is the first of many details that push the young advertising executive René Saavedra (played by the enormously gifted Gael García Bernal, here taking on the Chilean accent with as much success as he had with Che’s Argentinean in The Motorcycle Diaries), who had no real desire for political involvement, especially in a system rigged against its own people.

No opens with an example of an ad Saavedra has conceived. It is lively and recalls many Coca-Cola commercials in its use of different genres all tied together with one song, but the postmodernism of the exercise frighten the clients, who can’t understand why there is miming in the commercial.

The scene has two important reasons for being included in the film. Firstly, it bookends the production by anticipating an almost identical scene at the end, in which it is made clear what change has occurred in the minds of Chileans in such a short period of time, thanks to Saavedra’s eventual participation in the “No” campaign. Secondly, the more immediate reason is the name of the product: a soft drink called “Free”.

This kind of advertising has obviously affected Saavedra’s way of thinking, and he proclaims it is “in line with the current social context”. Whether or not that is true, it certainly influenced the “No” campaign, and the result is a spot full of feeling, although the people in the advertisement are nameless and without identity, save for being Chileans, or rather virtual Chileans inhabiting a better future. The resulting video, naïvely optimistic but brimming with energy, accompanied by the campaign song “¡ Chile, la alegría ya viene !” (Chile, happiness is coming!), can be viewed on YouTube. 

Each campaign has 15 minutes on television to make its pitch to Chileans, but the “No” organizers have to contend with an interesting dilemma: They want their commercial to be about a better, brighter future full of people smiling and not fearing the regime in power (which, by the way, uses fear in its own ad campaign), but they want to convey this by using the negative “no”. The way they choose to attack this problem is to view the no as the opposite of complicity, in other words, a deliberate decision to break with the past (and the present).

This break with the past is very well depicted by the film’s fragmented visuals. Often, scenes would start in one location (usually inside) before suddenly continuing in another (usually outside). At first, this seems like an odd directorial decision, as a question may be asked in one place and answered in another, but the many lens flares caused by the sunshine outside do suggest brightness ready to envelop our protagonists.

The film itself was also shot on U-matic film stock, which reminds us of the small budget the characters’ real-life counterparts were working with but also allows the seamless integration of archive footage, especially of the mass protests and the government’s ruthless response. The richest colours are onscreen when the commercial is aired, and although it makes a stunning contrast with the relatively “realistic”, drab colours of the rest of the film, it is not of a different world, just one that is hyperreal, its palette boosted and the action either sped up or slowed down according to the need for emphasis. The success of the film’s own combination of reality vs. idealism in its visuals mirrors the tension the “No” campaign has to mitigate.

They do this by their choice of an idealistic symbol for their effort to fight a very real threat: They choose a rainbow. Saavedra urges his fellow organisers to use happiness instead of fear or hate, although the facts are often presented in smaller spots, and with great effectiveness on the viewers, especially those who are angry at the government and don’t want the happiness to silence or ignore the pain.

The “No” campaign doesn’t really have a leader, although the leader of the Christian Democrats, Patricio Aylwin, who would eventually replace Pinochet as president, does appear from time and time. And it is important to notice that these important political figures, central to Chilean life, are not played by actors but instead presented by means of footage recorded at the time, like George Clooney did with Joe McCarthy in Good Night, and Good Luck.

The future is constantly in our heads because Saavedra has a young son, Simón, on whose life the imminent referendum will have a very visible impact. In one very powerful shot, Saavedra and Simón walk hand-in-hand down the road, our view of them only slightly obstructed by blurred figures in the foreground. We realise these are riot police, but we don’t see them until a wider shot, quite unnecessary, showing them lined up on one side of the street. 

The single take in the first 15 minutes of Billy Elliot, in which a conversation between a young boy and girl takes place while the girl walks past riot police in Newcastle, seemingly oblivious to their presence as she drags a stick across their shields, was done much better, as it made a much bigger impact because it was so much simpler.

No is about small moments almost hidden in everyday life. We realise the importance of events in shaping the characters’ view of their situation without the film dwelling on any of it. When Saavedra’s middle-aged housekeeper, Carmen, who had considered her life to be quite good and was going to vote “Yes” in the referendum, is confronted by police late at night who call her a “bitch”, the film doesn’t go in for a close-up, it doesn’t stretch the moment, and it doesn’t refer to it again, but we know this has probably changed her relationship to the government.

In another very brief moment, the “No” logo can be seen scraped out on the outside of a house, and we realise the movement is quietly gaining momentum, and yet our focus could or should be on the characters in the shot. Director Pablo Larraín creates a world that doesn’t need us to stop and think; his film creates a world rich with detail and behaviour and asks us to put some of the pieces together ourselves and provide a more engaging experience of the material.

Bernal’s emotional range is noteworthy; in particular, by the end of the film, he has gone through threats, betrayal, physical violence and elation, and his face can change from anxious to childlike glee in a second. And the film uses him in this historical setting very well to highlight the human dimension of the struggle for freedom combined with a display of the power of people, not to change things, but to make more people change, until the regime crumbles from the inside.