First published on Issue 116 of Senses of Cinema, with thanks to Hamed Sarrafi.
by TWY
The difficulty of writing about Mariano Llinás’ recent work, after the monumental La Flor (The Flower, 2018), can be summed up as a question of visibility – or rather, its invisibility. First, that these films are shown only in small capacities, limited to a few film festivals and retrospectives, as well as limited releases in Buenos Aires. No streaming options as well, although some can be found on the internet. Second, that these are stubbornly “local” films that deal with “local” subjects, which are difficult for most non-Argentinian viewers or critics to conceptualize how they would resonate with said locals. This, however, is not an indication that these films have been playing to a large audience in the filmmaker’s native country, currently under an administration that has been hostile to independent filmmakers who, allegedly, make movies for “just four people.” But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The real questions would be: in the years since his most ambitious project, what exactly did Mariano Llinás film? What are their subjects, their materials, their intimate concerns?
To start, since La Flor, Llinás has been making films with the quality of daily exercises: a whopping seven feature films, plus a bunch of shorts and other work-in-progress projects. No more grand schemes or vehicles, no more diagrams of flowers, but only a persistent cycle of filming and editing, where he practices an inventory of “small forms”: the shot as a reading or writing device; transgression of commissions; itineraries of travel; collaborations with other artists, or “duels”; the rediscovering and classification of marginalised popular traditions; self-portraits masquerading as its negation, etc.
As always, Llinás is not doing these practices alone. El Pampero Cine, the group which he cofounded some 20 years ago, continues to flourish (“longer than The Beatles!“), and outside of its core members (Laura Citarella, Alejo Mouguillansky, Agustín Mendilaharzu), it now has a roster of frequent and young collaborators, some of which, notably editor Ignacio Codino, have made a significant mark on Llinás’ recent efforts, which Llinás refers to as “the Codino era” in a conversation with critic Roger Koza. Although not all are edited by the same person, these works present a unique challenge of making sense of displaced, improvised or fleeting materials into an editorial rhythm that gives shape and logic to projects that are in constant flux, because its subject, Llinás, films too much and yet, too little – too much, since everything seen can be filmed, like his endearing canvas of the Pampas, this plain that overwhelms both with grandeur and flatness; too little, since each shot also induces its sense of poverty, a certain modest clumsiness: a view out of the windshield, a country road stretching out to the distance, a blank page on a laptop, or simply, a self-portrait. What is remarkable is a distinct taste for the sketch, rather than a conceivable whole, within which these small forms circulate or subvert.
The following brief introduction should provide a peek into Llinás’ interlocking interests. The cycle opened with Concierto para la batalla de El Tala (Concerto for the Battle of El Tala, 2021), initially conceived as preparatory work for an opera of the same name by Llinás and composer Gabriel Chwojnik, and intended as the first chapter of a currently discontinued cycle of films titled Saga de los Mártires Unitarios (Saga of the Unitarian Martyrs), combining footage of rehearsals with a reading of a text about failed military leaders during the Argentine Civil Wars. Words from the text are shown on screen in a rather cozy approach, like hosting a book club accompanied by live music and karaoke sessions, although the film doesn’t promise much with its scope, neither the filmmaker’s general desire of making another epic, nor a more particular representation of these bygone subjects, ideologically “incorrect” by contemporary standards, although a sole image remains in the figure of dueling fencers.
At least one key motif was established: the immediate record of the filmmaking process, thus terminating the gap between different stages of production, from the shooting to the recording of music to editing. In Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel (Corsini Sings Blomberg and Maciel, 2021), in which a cheerful partnership was found with singer-guitarist Paolo Dacal, the rerecording and deciphering of old, historical songs of Ignacio Corsini (1891-1967) continues the fascination with history’s little persons.3 The film, with its mixture of musical, literal, theatrical and cartographical detective work, is a comprehensive display of El Pampero’s artistic cobweb within the contemporary as well as historical – the return of Llinás in modes of the arabesque. The theme of civil war and its martyrs finds an ideal poetics in the songwriting of Héctor Pedro Blomberg (1889–1955), with his romantic depiction of the roles of women during the rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas, provided the perfect specimen for Llinás and his Commando Corsini to stage scenes for potential future films. However, these short sequences, shot quickly with actresses from El Pampero’s usual troupe (Pilar Gamboa, Constanza Feldman, Luciana Acuña, etc.), are not merely means to an end, it rather seeks to mirror or rival the poetical compactness of the songs themselves, using a few quick verses to paint a portrait or a passage of time. Meanwhile, the film’s etymological investigation of forgotten books and words, of the geography of a bygone 19th-century Buenos Aires, envisions a rich gallery of civil-war era porteño culture. In addition, by mirroring the trio of artists that formed the original 1929 album “Corsini interpreta a Blomberg y Maciel,” the film also saw the typical off-screen voiceover transforming into a series of comedic dialogues between the filmmakers and the musician, and with that, a clash of perspectives and tonal conflicts.
The next three works, consisting of five films, also saw Llinás attempting at an all-powerful fictional machine, where a tricky contest with reality ensued:
- Clorindo Testa (2022), in which the filmmaker’s negation of his materials backfires in a comedic manner, revealing an emotional and enigmatic family history;
- Tríptico de Mondongo (2024), consisting of Mondongo: El equilibrista (Mondongo: The Tightrope Walker), Retrato de Mondongo (Portrait of Mondongo), and Kunst der Farbe (The Art of Colour), in which an explosion of artistic and personal clashes ruptured the original project into three contradicting parts;
- Popular tradición de esta tierra (Popular Tradition of This Land, 2024), the second instalment in the Corsini saga, in which the continuing classification of Corsini’s oeuvre circles back to Argentina’s present, in a moment where many things are at risk of being lost.
Therefore, each work contains a dialogue, or in the filmmaker’s term, a duel. In there, a delicious tension also unfolds with Llinás himself becoming omnipresent onscreen, if not a protagonist of all these films. Always funny but with a glimpse of uneasiness, this caricature of Llinás is our trusted guide through these personal labyrinths, although he leads as much as he diverts. A film is already the body of its creator, increasingly enormous, as if he would swallow Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir all at once, with an appetite for constant contradiction: playing the buffoon, the conservative, the villain. The films often negate their true nature by inventing false scenarios, in which Llinás indulges in eccentric comedic detours and other promises. “It’s not wise to make an autobiography,” the filmmaker claims in Clornido Testa, since his desire for fiction remains strong, but here, fiction fertilises not stories borrowed from Hollywood B-movies or Borgesian mysteries, but instead involuntarily invites the reality that surrounds its fabrication. The realism of these films (that is, the joy of filmmaking) exists also in the company that Llinás resides, not simply El Pampero, but also family members, friends and enemies, musicians, painters, critics, other distanced figures, etc. In every film, a balancing act takes place between Llinás’ performance of a Wellesian megalomaniac and his amiable figure of a collective player, between sincerity and provocation, wandering between extended monologues and chirpy debates, shaped by the abundance of enunciations that popularise each work.
留下评论