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Written by Mark Reed
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Saturday, 16 August 2008
An unexpected classic of the medium. Reminiscent in no small way of the classic era of film, the largely-silent, Black & White "La Antena" is timeless and eternal film-making.The narrative is driven by evocative and distinctive imagery, a haunting and brilliant soundtrack, and no shortage of imagination. From watching this, "La Antena" is pure cinema, the type of film that you thought they stopped making in 1933 : there's little opportunity to date this film as it is truly out of time. Even little factors such as hairstyles and clothing has been chosen to be as timeless as possible.
The film is brilliant, evocative, and clearly influenced by cinema of the ages : from Citizen Kane and Metropolis to Twelve Monkeys, The Day of The Fight, Pi, Les Voyages Dans Le Lune, The Koyansqatsi Trilogy, and so on and so forth. Sadly, whilst this film is clearly the work of a visionary au fait with the moving image and possessing his own voice, this film will suffer as it doesn't have enough explosions to please the usual multiplex drones, or a well known name attached to it. Were it the work of Fincher or Aronofsky or Gilliam it would be rightly hailed as a brave masterpiece.
The only drawback I can find is that, as an English speaker, the use of the Argentinian subtitles to replace the lack of much spoken dialogue, whilst stunningly inventive and effective in the film - where they become as much part of the action as any other visual element - often detracts from the visuals. These Argentinian subtitles float as part of the image and not as a seperate entity, so unless you speak Argentinian, you also have to read two sets of subtitles at once to understand what is going on : the in-frame Argentinian subtitles, and the off-frame English Language ones.
Aside from this, I cannot recommend this film enough to any cinephile : the premise is classic, albeit a variant on classic dystopian fiction of the ages, the film is virtually silent (the first line of dialogue is 16 minutes in, and there's only about 20 lines in the whole film), and overall it is a compelling, brilliant film that time will prove a unreserved artistic success.Only registered users can write comments.
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