 |
Vol 1, No. 2. (Sept/Dic
2005) La riesgosa naturaleza de lo Barroco: una mirada a Crónicas Gabriela Alemán El 24 de septiembre (2004) fue el día que se estrenó comercialmente Crónicas en Ecuador, se había presentado para ese entonces en el Festival de San Sebastián y en Cannes, donde integró la sección “Un Certain Regard” de dicho festival. Se estrenó en Ecuador ocho meses antes de lanzamiento mundial para que pudiera competir en la edición 2005 de los premios Oscar, en la categoría de Mejor Película Extranjera. Fue pre-seleccionada junto a 49 otras películas que compitieron por eso galardón. Entre los premios que ha logrado están los de mejor película, mejor guión y mejor actuación (Damián Alcazar) en el Festival de Guadalajara (2005). Crónicas es el segundo largometraje de Sebastián Cordero, en 1999 había dirigido y escrito el premiado Ratas, ratones y rateros que ayudó a insertar a Ecuador, aunque precariamente, dentro del actual boom del cine latinoamericano. My interest in this paper is to look at this film, co-produced by the Mexican Anhelo (Alfonso Cuarón) and Tequila Gang (Berta Navarro and Guillermo del Toro), as an intersection of various categories: those of authenticity, tradition and ethnography. These categories shape and, in many ways, are shaped themselves by the international market and what it expects (or is thought to expect) of Latin American films.
I would first of all like to explore what “authenticity” implies when speaking of film . In many of the international and national news articles or reviews that have come out after “Crónicas” release, the emphasis on the “real nature of the film” (El Comercio, Sept. 2004) or of it “being based on true events that reflect aspects of the harsh Latin American reality” ( www.doncinema.com , 19/02/05), emerge again and again. This continual reference to its documentary nature, a bona fide assurance that it functions as film, dates back to an earlier epoch of Latin American film, to that of the New Latin American Cinema Movement which revolved around the concept of a Third Cinema. A movement whose heyday was in the late 1960s. Forty years later it still seems to be what is expected of Latin American Film, in and outside of Latin America . As Robert Stam points out:
Third World filmmakers are supposed to speak for the oppressed… This Third-worldist film ideology risks installing a formula for a correct cinema, but one which ignores the…traditions of particular countries” (Stam: 2000 , 283).
What complicates this insight, an insight which would permit critics to see Ecuadorian film in a new light, is that “the tradition” which Stam speaks of is a lacking signifier in Ecuadorian cinema. Since 1924, when the first feature fiction film was exhibited in Ecuador , till this day, only 40 feature movies have been made. Of those movies, those shot between the decades of 1920 to 1960, none exist; of those made and exhibited during the 60s and 70s, none are in circulation. The national “Cinemateca” does not have copies of them, nor do they exist in video clubs or stores. These are movies that have not been seen by the new generations of filmmakers and the public at large and which have been black-listed because of their “commercial” nature in the few Periodicals or Journals that have published articles concerning Ecuadorian film ( Revista Cultura, Cuadro a Cuadro ). What is interesting about them, and especially in regard to this paper is that they were mostly (7 of the 11 movies) co-productions with Mexico , as is “Crónicas” . Now, if there exist no national referents, if an “Ecuadorian filmic tradition” is not in place; when representing the country on screen, who does the filmmaker dialogue with? Whose gazes does she or he confront? Rey Chow points out that, “Like writing, filmmaking, too, is conditioned by the utterances of others, the references other made in and of the past” (Chow: 2000, 176) . She goes on to argue that “a film about one's own culture is a certain kind of homecoming, how does one go about mediating between the desire for portraying that “home” exactly as one thinks one knows it and the allure of multiple images that are already made by others and seen…by others? (177).
Authentic, in many ways, can be defined as anything that is untainted by the gaze of others. With this in mind, let us return to how Ecuador has been perceived on screen in more recent times; those gazes that have reached Cordero's generation and those following his. The only national reference would be Camilo Luzuriaga's oeuvre, composed to this day of 4 films ( La Tigra, Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda, Cara o Cruz and Mientras llega el día ), three of which are based on adaptations of canonized works of literature and all of which relate to the construction of a national identity and which, esthetically, pertains to “auteur” cinema. One of the movies is a historical piece set in the XIXth Century, the other is set in the idealic and nostalgic past of the 1930's, another in the turbulent years of the 70s in Ecuador and, finally ,the last is set in the early XXIth century. The central characters of all of Luzuriaga's films are middle class intellectuals and it is in this locus: that of the middle class, that we see represented on film. The “Other” gaze, that of the international representation of Ecuador on screen since the 1980s till this day is pregnant with contradiction: Ecuador has served as a sort of empty signifier, a void to be filled . When in the late 80s, Ken Kwapis, hanging on the tail of the highly successful “Indiana Jones” series -shot in exotic locals around the world- looked for a fantasy El Dorado, where Cindy Lauper and Jeff Goldblum, would play the main characters, Ecuador was chosen because the first choice, Perú, was demeaned too dangerous (on account of Sendero Luminoso's activities); so an invented copy of something resembling Machu Pichu, but not Machu Pichu, was constructed and shot in the province of Azuay in Ecuador. Of the other three international big budget films of the last decade shot in Ecuador , “The Dancer Upstairs” (John Malcovich) , “Proof of Life” ( Taylor Hackford) and “María Full of Grace” (Joshua Marton), Ecuador stood in for Perú, an imaginary Andean country, and Colombia , in that order. Ecuador has always served as a stand-in for something else: a no-man's land signifying corruption, risk, ambiguity, lack-of-opportunity, beautiful landscapes, untapped resources, the last virgin land. If the Ecuadorian gaze is centered on the middle-class and the outside gaze invisibilizes Ecuador completely and if identity is constructed through the negotiation between how we perceive ourselves with how others perceive us, then the filmic representation of Ecuador will be of a negative nature. In terms of tradition, and going back to Stam's appreciation, that is something that is still to be created. Ecuadorian Cinema has been attempting that juggling act in the last few years and, doing so, has found fissures in those fixed boundaries outlined in the late sixties of the three cinema model. Let us remember that first cinema was outlined as commercial cinema; second cinema was a brand of “art” or “auteur” film while third cinema sought to make politically emancipatory films. These three alternatives now co-exist in Ecuador, I would argue “Crónicas ”, with a 3 million dollar budget, could enter into the first category; Luzuriaga's “ Entre Marx y una mujer desnuda ” and Mateo Herrera's experimental “ Jaque ” would represent the second; while guerrilla documentaries like “ Me cago en el ALCA ” or “ How Bush won the elections in Ecuador ” would invariably fit into the last category. These last two documentaries never entered the commercial movie circuit and have circulated in pirated copies made by the filmmakers themselves; “ Jaque ”, made without a screen play and shot during two weeks on digital camera, played limitedly for two weeks in movie theaters, in only one city, before the exhibitors pulled it; “ Crónicas ” on the other hand was shown in all the major cities that now have movie-plexes (only four in all of Ecuador: Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca and Manta) and ran for more than two months and, since May of this year, will be internationally distributed in Europe and the USA. Ecuador, alongside Paraguay, are the only 2 countries in South America which have never passed film laws; in Ecuador there exist no state subsidies, no loans with low interest rates for cultural productions, no Film Institutes, Ecuador is still to sign with Ibermedia so international investment will be a feasible option, there exist no cash incentives for production, no special tax breaks, no obligatory cuota of Ecuadorian films shown in theaters or of shorts exhibited as a double-bill -as has been the practice in many countries-, and as of this year, Ecuadorian films have to pay the same taxes as any other international film if they are to be exhibited in movie theaters, that is 12% of ticket sales. This means that, the possible $300.000 dollar recovery of investment in a movie, that is if the movie is a success and runs nationwide for two months, will be even lower. A movie ticket cost $3.50, of which the film makers now receive $1, in an economy that now runs under the dollar and where the minimum wage is $150. The dwindling middle class is the only patron of Ecuadorian cinema and with a market flooded with publicity for big budget international movies, and no special protection for Ecuadorian cinema, it is becoming the loosing partner of an unsigned deal. Paradoxically enough, film production has never been at it's highest, if in the 80s and 90s the norm was 3 to 4 movies per decade, since the beginning of this century, five productions have been made per year. I excuse myself for such a long digression but I believe it is necessary to keep these facts in mind when considering why the national debate surrounding film in Ecuador, in very concrete terms, centers around the questions of tradition, authenticity, national culture, the notion of “selling out”, marketability and international distribution. I believe that in the approximation to the mark of what “commercial” means, lies the future survival or demise of Ecuadorian Cinema; a mark whose flipside would be the national. Alongside commercial, is sanctioned the notion of the “transcultural”. Many Latin American theorists have attempted such approximations when speaking of national cultures, I would like to follow Arlindo Machado's direct reference to the audio-visual medium as the “hybridization of alternatives” and in that line follow another of Chow's arguments,
That film has always been, since its inception, a transcultural phenomenon, having as it does the capacity to transcend “culture”-to create modes of fascination which are readily accessible and which engage audiences in ways independent of their linguistic and cultural specificities (1998, 174) Ecuador's filmic tradition seen under this light, is commercial cinema. When I say “commercial”, I am thinking of a cinema made with the intention of recouping investment and making a profit. A cinema, not thought of in terms of a “classical” grammar responding to capitalist narratives as in the first cinema model, but a cinema which has an audience in view and because it does not have any type of state support or subsidy depends solely on its commercial success for its survival. Those little known in the present but successful films of the sixties and seventies would be the predecessors of “ Crónicas ”; hybrid films, attached to generic formulas: spy, comedy, horror and adventure films that were produced under co-production models, thinking of international South American audiences, and not only in terms of national audiences. Movies made to “engage audiences”, with international “stars” such as El Santo, the renown Julio Jaramillo, Enrique Guzmán. But as in any retelling, as Borge's Pierre Menard has taught us, nothing is the same. If those co-productions with Mexico wished to show a modern Ecuador, an Ecuador were a James Bond rip-off such as Alex Dinamo could feel at home; 40 years later the relationship with international audiences has changed. The Ecuador that can now be shown through the co-production formula, or that which is thought to much likely engage international audiences, is one mixed with the allure of the “primitive”. In the refashioning or creation of a “tradition” and a “representation” of Ecuador on film, that seems to be one of the many options.La verdad no es toda la verdad
¿Cuánto nos queda por conocer de lo primitivo? Y, ¿cuántas formas puede tener? Quisiera argumentar que cualquier película hecha en Ecuador será leída como una película sobre Ecuador. Como una manera de exhibirlo. Debido a la falta de representación de Ecuador en la pantalla y justamente por ello, se tenderá a una lectura alegórica . Como señalan Shohat y Stam, “Cada imagen negativa de un grupo poco representado se convertirá, dentro de la hermenéutica de la dominación, severamente cargado de significados alegóricos (183)”. A través de esta reducción, una película de una hora y media, condensa una manera de identificar a toda una cultura, una suerte de etnografía moderna cargada de un inmenso poder metonímico. El problema se encuentra en este callejón sin salida. Si el cine ecuatoriano es heredero de una tradición genérica transcultural, tradición genérica dependiente en estereotipos y caricaturas, cómo puede escapar de una lectura alegórica? ¿Cómo luchar contra la posibilidad de que un thriller de un asesino serial como Crónicas se lea como la “realidad” del Ecuador? Pienso que Crónicas trata de negociar con esa posibilidad, a través de su propia forma; al cuestionar la propia noción de lo que significa “primitivo” en el siglo veintiuno. El salvaje o lo primitivo es una categoría creada por la ciencia, una categoría que sitúa a un grupo definido según sus características raciales en una etapa evolutiva anterior, en la historia de la humanidad (Tobing Rony, 7). En Crónicas, es el primitivo estereotipado, el asesino identificable racialmente, el que logra aprovechar los medios (y sus tecnologías) a su favor. Bonilla, the reporter, of latino descent, who is uncomfortable in his “own” language Spanish and how cannot function “adequately” in the ambiguous territory of Babahoyo, Ecuador; it is he, that is finally cast into the role of the primitive. The “new” primitive who still believes himself in a position of advantage because of where-he-comes-from, but is at a total disadvantage when interpreting the vastly larger global space of the often called Third World. Bonilla himself is a spawn of that world, a spawn who having adopted the mask of the colonizer, can no longer “see” without it. The murder, the Monster, on the other hand, because of the increasing worldwide access to the “international” syntax of a collective culture transmitted through TV and “English”, possess the advantage of knowing his adversary. He has power over him. This bind can perhaps be clarified by what Ashis Nandy signals out in “Dialogue and Diaspora”, Even when we describe the totally unknown, we can do so only in terms of the partially known or the known. Instead of admitting the failure of our categories, we love to clobber our empirical experiences until they fit these categories. (102)
While the murderer does not adhere to fixed categories, the reporter Bonilla does.
But, before continuing, let me read a brief summery of the movie, one that boxoffice.com put up in its website on the 19 th of February of this year,
“ Crónicas ” gets off to a slam-bang start as a small Ecuador village mourns the rape and murder of three boys, the latest victims of a serial killer dubbed The Monster. As the funeral service winds down, sweet-natured traveling salesman Vinicio accidentally runs over the brother of one of the victims. The crowd, led by the dead boy's father, goes wild, kicking, hitting and setting Vinicio on fire, until TV reporter Manolo Bonilla saves his life…Vinicio is jailed for involuntary manslaughter and when Bonilla tries to interview him for his enormously popular ( Miami based) news program “One Hour with the Truth”, the accused offers an intriguing deal: if Bonilla uses his TV program to expose his wrongful imprisonment (and probably save him from being murdered in jail), Vinicio will provide information on The Monster's real identity…Bonilla agrees. And during numerous exchanges, some with TV cameras rolling, Bonilla toys with Vinicio's desire for freedom while Vinicio stokes Bonilla's desire to land the scoop of the year. Eventually, circumstantial evidence, leads Bonilla to believe that Vinicio is The Monster (but only after he has been freed because of his program) (Mark Keizer).
All the reviews that have appeared in the foreign and national press (since “ Crónicas ” entered the festival circuit) have relied on the moral dilemma of Bonilla to “explain” the movie, just one example: From “Variety”, posted Feb. 4 th , 2005,
With considerable passion and more than a little anger, “ Crónicas ” argues that our appetite for an increasing coarse and sensational type of news programming has skewed our compasses: The public will say and do whatever it takes to get on TV, while the industry will air whatever they can to ensure we will keep watching.
If the public will say and do whatever it takes to get on Jerry Springer in the US; this is not the case in Babahoyo. Vinicio will use the knowledge he has over Bonilla to get out of jail, to get away from being murdered inside it, the fate of any child molester in prison. In that difference lies what Martín Barbero would call the “mediations of interpretation” coming from the periphery. The “meaning” of the movie is not in the accusation formulated against sensationalist news media or the moral dilemma of a reporter who travels to the Third World to unravel the truth; rather, the dilemma lies at the very aesthetic conception of the complexities of movement and migration across borders: Across language, myth and metaphor there lie interconnections, but they do not automatically lead to a shared recognition or identity. Language, myth and metaphor may be common, but they are also inhabited in different ways. (Chambers, 25-26)
And what I would finally like to argue is that what is confronted in the movie are two categories or world views, one stemming from the baroque and the other from realist notions of modernity. Ecuador is presented under the category of risk, a category bound to an ethos of the baroque; and that esthetically, many argue, is bound since the 17 th century to Latin America. Amongst the many studies that link Latin America with this ethos,one of the most pertinent is Bolivar Echeverría's “The Modernity of the Barroque”, in it he argues that in the “liberated representation” found in Latin America, there is a continual interplay between opposites: between the essential and the apparent, the real and the fictitious, the sane and the illusory, the pragmatic and the utopian. In that dialogue there is never any attempt at reaching a classical dialectic resolution but rather, what predominates is a visual and conceptual ambivalence. An ambivalence that presents itself as risk . At the center of Cordero´s concerns is that fraught territory: I have always thought that serial killers were very stereotyped on screen, they loose all their humanity (if they ever had one). I believe that even a ruthless killer can feel love, the same as any family man, he can be good and caring and also harbor dark feelings…Driving through Babahoyo I realized that it was the ideal location for this story. Babahoyo is a city which has flooded 2 to 3 meters during centuries for 5 months every year yet people continue to live there. Houses are built on top of stacks and frail and narrow bridges made of bamboo connect the houses with the main road. It is a city where children learn to swim before they learn to walk, the houses do not have potable water, but they all have TV antennas. It is a beautiful and rich spot but it can also be hell on earth. (Cordero, Nuestros Rollos , 09/10 2004)
In the finished film that last conjunction, but, is replaced by and: Babahoyo is beautiful and rich and hell. The baroque permits contradictions to subsist. It permits the phrase used in the poster of the film and uttered by Vinicio during the film: The truth is not all the truth , to be more then a moral judgment passed on the sensationalist press. That phrase is not analysis but affirmation. The very esthetic of the movie is a “contrapunteo” between the reality effect of Cinema Verité, which moves under the logic of realism and that is bound in the movie to the TV camera and the reports who arrive from Miami and the representation of Babahoyo, Vinicio and Vinicio´s world under the logic of the baroque. The five “characteristic features” of the baroque according to Wölfflin are:
All these tactics appear though out the film:
If “ Crónicas” very esthetic and structure is negotiating the possibility of belonging to a larger tradition that will permit its entry into the global market; with its large budget (by Ecuadorian standards) and high production values it is also “creating” a tradition that will be very hard to emulate. And it is also setting the standard by which other Ecuadorian productions will be judged. Not only by the critics or film reviewers but by the audiences themselves. I wish to end this paper with one question in mind, How many casualties will that provoke within the frail structure of Ecuadorian Cinema?
BibliografíaBrennan, Timothy, “Cosmopolitans and Celebrities”, Race & Class , 31,1, 1989
Munck, Ronaldo, “Postmodernism, Politics and Culture” in Cultural Politics in Latin America, Brooksbank Jones, Anny & Ronaldo Munck Ed., NY: St.Martin's Press, 2000.
Chambers, Iain, Migracy, Culture, Identity , London : Routledge, 1994.
Stam, Robert, Film Theory, An Introduction , Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
-“Beyond Third Cinema: the aesthetics of hybridity” in Rethinking Third Cinema , London: Routledge, 2001.
Guneratne, Anthony R. “Introduction” in Rethinking Third Cinema , London: Routledge, 2001.
D'Lugo Marvin, “Authorship, globalization, and the new identity of Latin American cinema: from the Mexican “ranchera” to Argentinian “exile in Rethinking Third Cinema , London : Routledge, 2001.
Chow, Rey, “The seductions of homecoming: place, authenticity, and Chen Kaige's Temptress Moon in Rethinking Third Cinema , London : Routledge, 2001.
-“Film and Cultural Identity” in The Oxford guide to Film Studies, Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998.
Tobing Rony, Fátima, The Third Eye: Race, Cinema and Ethnographic Spectacle , Durham : Duke University Press, 1996.
Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism , London : Routledge, 1994.
Martín Barbero, Jesús, De los medios a las mediaciones , México: GG, 1987.
|
