From San Sebastian
There is a beauty that is both very archaic and very sophisticated in Afternoons of solitudethe extraordinary documentary –the first in his work- from Catalan Albert Serrawhich raised the level of official competition to its highest point San Sebastian International Film Festival. Archaic because the spectacle of the bullfighting –brutally cruel, but a spectacle nonetheless- which is at the centre of the new film by the director of Pacifiction It has antecedents that go back to the Bronze Age and whose most modern expression – the bullfight as we know it today – emerged in the 18th century and seems to have changed little since then. And sophisticated because Serra is a filmmaker with absolute mastery of the forms of the best contemporary cinema, a solitary and often brilliant creator who has been characterized precisely, in the first part of his work –Honour of chivalryinspired by Don Quixote of La Mancha, The Song of the Birdsabout the journey of the Three Wise Men – in using primitive sources and materials, which make up the identity and essence of their culture.
Perhaps that is why it is not surprising that Serra has been interested in the bullfightwhich is “Spanish cultural heritage, worthy of protection throughout the national territory”, as established by a 2013 law. And which remains in force despite the growing opposition of a part of the Spanish population, who in recent days demonstrated against the film – at the doors of the Kursaal there were banners and slogans shouted “Cinema is culture, bullfighting is torture”– and he even went so far as to ask for the film to be excluded from the festival. Something that the director of San Sebastian, José Luis Rebordinos, accustomed to public debates, obviously opposed: “What is happening in this country?”, said Rebordinos. “Before, traditional censors would see the films and then ask that they not be shown. Now censorship comes in advance. I don’t believe a supposed progressive discourse if it turns out that they only want to censor. They are not humanists, they are censors.”
The Spanish Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, himself came out in support of him: “Art and culture are here to challenge us,” he said, “and any filmmaker or artist can develop a work from the perspective they consider appropriate.” Usually controversial in his statements, Serra first spoke out ironically against censorship (“Why bullfights? Why don’t they ban war instead?”), but then decided to clarify that He approached bullfighting “with respect and innocence, without prejudice or provocation.” And he ended by confessing that “I had never worked so close to death, it was impressive.”
It is precisely that relationship between bullfighting and death -a theme that was already developed in Goya’s engravings and García Lorca’s poetry, antecedents that are not too big for the film- What Serra explores in the most naked and stark waystripping the film of any trace of exoticism or folkloric colour to remain only with the essential, with that moment of truth (that was the name of an unjustly forgotten film by Francesco Rosi about the bullfighter Miguelín) in which man and animal look each other in the eyes before death, which will surely be that of the bull, but could also be that of the bullfighter, who gives himself over to that atavistic ritual that has as much risk as a strange choreographic exhibitionism.
In Afternoons of solitudethe absolute protagonist is Antonio Roca Rey, a Peruvian naturalized Spaniard who at 27 years old has become the great star of bullfighting todayfilling every single one of the venues where it is presented. But the film’s staging – because a good documentary also makes staging decisions, as do the best fiction films – chooses to leave the audience completely aside. Not a single shot of the packed stands will be seen, which are relegated to a powerful off-screen reinforced by the magnificent sound work of the team led by Jordi Ribas.
The current world is almost completely elided in Afternoons of solitude. What remains then is the sticky arena, the pretentious team that accompanies the bullfighter, the baroque suits of lights and the fight itself, just as it was centuries ago. And of course the blood, which gushes from the wounds of the bull, but also from those of the bullfighter, who more than once is on the verge of being gored to death, but as the star of the show he proudly bears it all over his body, including his face, sometimes without it being known if it is his or the animal’s.
Jordi Tort’s virtuoso camera does not miss a single detail of each fight and is able to sustain a sequence shot for minutes that seem eternal. It is no coincidence that the cameraman and Serra himself are both responsible for the editing, because it was evidently a decision by both of them to find not only the internal rhythm of each shot but also its exact duration, to give greater tension and drama to each sequence. The use of telephoto lenses and even digital zooms made in post-production collaborate in achieving moments of a strange, hypnotic plastic abstraction.
There are only two moments when the structure of Afternoons of solitude is allowed to escape from the arena of the bullring. One is when Roca Rey travels in his private van, surrounded by his gang, all infected with a delirious adrenaline, with dilated pupils, almost as if they were drugged by the danger they are going to or have just faced. The other is a scene of disturbing intimacywhen Roca Rey, barely assisted by his personal manager, puts on his tight-fitting suit of lights with difficulty in the hotel room, as if he were a transgender dancer. It is an instance of a disturbing androgyny that – together with the prayers and kisses to the image of a virgin – contrasts with the declared machismo of the bullfight, where the “balls” of the bullfighter are celebrated so much, even the shouts. Of these details, of these subtleties, the bullfight is made Afternoons of solitude.
