Japón (2002, Carlos Reygadas) heralded the debut of the twenty-first century’s second new talent in world cinema (the first has to be Apichatpong Weerasethakul.) Who else for that matter has joined those ranks since? Steve McQueen? One might add Yorgos Lanthimos, although I'm not yet a fan. Japón is also primitive, authentic, fringe, and something else altogether rare in cinema, Mexican. I’ve read Reygadas’s follow up was met with disappointment, but cannot see why. I love Battle in Heaven (2005, Reygadas). Silent Light (2007, Reygadas) and Post Tenebras Lux (2012, Reygadas) yield the satisfaction of why some directors should be followed.
But Reygadas latest has left me resigned to any hope of his further sustainability. Guess that leaves Joseph Kahn as the only filmmaker to emerge in the new millennium who I still have hope in.
Our Time (2018, Reygadas) opens with a shot of children playing in the mud, in a location drawing a pastoral aesthetic familiar to most of the director’s other work. But then it turns into a movie about a jealous husband spying on his wife’s texts at which point I lost all interest. Oh and the husband is played by Carlos Reygadas. Like Bresson, prior to Our Time Reygadas understood the power of silence in his art, but not anymore. The Reygadas character is a boring middle aged whiner that makes this movie unbearable—and this complaint is coming from someone whose favorite director is Woody Allen.
There’s a subplot in Our Time about a bull fatally gorging one of the ranch hands. The other cowboys try to track the bull down to put him down, but never find it. Then at the end we see the bull fall off a precipice to its death. The shot is obviously CGI, and while I’m in no way condoning animal cruelty, this comes off as a symbol of the compromises to be found all over the movie that amount to so many diminishing returns, and the death of the wild nature that used to make Reygadas's movies so captivating. Japón infamously features shots of animal cruelty; Battle in Heaven has sexually explicit shots that involve blow jobs and nude fat Mexicans; but now, a smartphone with texts that reveal an affair.
There’s a subplot in Our Time about a bull fatally gorging one of the ranch hands. The other cowboys try to track the bull down to put him down, but never find it. Then at the end we see the bull fall off a precipice to its death. The shot is obviously CGI, and while I’m in no way condoning animal cruelty, this comes off as a symbol of the compromises to be found all over the movie that amount to so many diminishing returns, and the death of the wild nature that used to make Reygadas's movies so captivating. Japón infamously features shots of animal cruelty; Battle in Heaven has sexually explicit shots that involve blow jobs and nude fat Mexicans; but now, a smartphone with texts that reveal an affair.
Also, Silent Light beautifully already explored infidelity in a marriage. Which just makes me wonder even more what if anything is the point of Our Time?
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