You will forgive me if, when shaping this text, I put aside —without completely abandoning it— the usual analysis of the feature film that concerns us in order to address certain issues that assailed my mind while I watched it; closely related to that constant duel between an impossible —and demanded— objectivity and subjectivity that arises when facing a regular production and trying to translate its impact into a review.
Anyone who knows me will know that I am a strong opponent of giving a numerical rating to a series or a movie. Ultimately, under layers of technique and narrative, the resulting product of a medium of artistic expression and the way we assimilate it is a question of individual sensations and perceptions at the antipodes of the strictly mathematicaland ‘Alcarràs’ has given me the perfect excuse to exemplify these ideas.
And it is that the new thing by Carla Simón, which arrives in our theaters after the overwhelming success of her debut feature ‘Verano 1993’ and after lifting the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival, has failed to find its way into my heart despite some obvious cinematic achievements that, beyond my icy reaction to her work, place the Catalan filmmaker as a treasure for our industry to take care of like gold on cloth.
Question of sensitivities (or lack of them)
After thinking about it a lot, maybe the best analogy I’ve found to describe my experience with ‘Alcarràs’ invites us to think of one of those meetings at a friends’ house that lead to a review of a photo album and other people’s memories. One made and presented with obvious care, full of tender and visually captivating snapshots, but to which it is difficult to react emotionally due to the lack of connection with its protagonists.
Something very similar to this was what I experienced during the 120 minutes of almost neorealist manners punctuated by walks and hard days of work among peach trees, innocent children’s games away from the media noise, family feasts, rural parties and blood feuds. A flow of chained passages with a rhythm perhaps too calm for my taste, which is asserted by veiling plot and dramatic turns under the intimate story of the characters and their environment.
Luckily, palliating my affective disconnection with the tape, the flashes of the beautiful direction of photography by Daniela Cajías, the honest interpretations of the cast or the staging of a Carla Simón who plays at times with the canons of the documentary made the trip more bearable. But ultimately, it is these close ties with reality that end up alienating me while a powerful conflict dissolves between memories that do not belong to me before being quickly settled.
Having exposed all this, what is the point of giving ‘Alcarràs’ a note or, even, a label? The answer is probably “none”, so all I have left is celebrate its status as speaker for Spanish cinema in international territory and the success of its author —crazy that this is only her second film—as I look with envy and some astonishment at the many who have been so deeply moved by her.