CARLOS REYGADAS Author(S): CARLOS REYGADAS, JOSÉ CASTILLO and Camino Detorrela Source: BOMB, No
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CARLOS REYGADAS Author(s): CARLOS REYGADAS, JOSÉ CASTILLO and Camino Detorrela Source: BOMB, No. 111 (SPRING 2010), pp. 70-77 Published by: New Art Publications Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27801132 . Accessed: 24/09/2014 22:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. New Art Publications is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to BOMB. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 22:14:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOMB 111 70 CARLOS REYGADAS BY JOS? CASTILLO This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 22:14:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FILM / CARLOS REYGADAS 71 Stills from Silent Light, 2007, color film with sound. Total running time: 136 minutes, above: Maria Pankratz as Marianne and Cor nelio Wall as Johan. All images courtesy of Mantarraya Producciones. This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 22:14:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BOMB 111 72 Born in Mexico City and trained as a law JOS? CASTILLO: wouldI liketo ask you about chosen yer specializing in armed-conflict resolution, your choice towork with film. Could you have this of cre Carlos Reygadas was inspired at age 30 to a different art form? And how does notion own to try his hand at film out of his appreciation of ating a world of your relate film specifically? the films of auteurs such as Andrei Tarkovsky CARLOS REYGADAS: Forme thissimply and Michelangelo Antonioni. He has been has been a consequence of being alive, livingmy life, never making films ever since. Having released more than of any specific search. I've program three feature-length films?Jap?n (2001), matically set out to make movies that reflect my world Battle in Heaven (2005), and Silent Light somehow. Now that I'm building a house, the idea of a (2007)?as well as two shorts, Reygadas's wanting to live ina particular way is also defined pos to make has become a unique voice that stands apart teriori. But going back to film,when wantedI from the filmmakers commonly associated my firstmovie wasI a lawyer and indeed liked law, but with the New Mexican Cinema movement I remember wanting a change of life. wantedI to feel of the last decade, whose productions are more freedom on a day-to-day basis. a more in sync with Hollywood norms. Actually, though, wantedI to make firstmovie Over the course of his career, Reygadas's in order to see if I had any talent for filmmaking?that off or not. technique has become more sophisticated was it. I had no idea whether I could pull it a and his vocabulary more controlled, achiev Iwent ahead and tried my hand at making movie, This determined ing sublime moments of beauty and the gro but Iknew nothing about the system. turns tesque. His films are neither autobiographical what I've been doing ever since. As it out, the nor self-referential. They construct a plat film madeI ended up reflecting my personal vision. I'm form inwhich visual language is the medi convinced that to be original all you have to do is be um that produces affect. Their severity and yourself: we're all original. It's like people's fingerprints. power arise from the fact that they address So, automatically I reflected a personal world. serious matters?love, death, faith, fear, sex, JC: There's an interesting relationship between sacrifice, and redemption?through everyday your characters' internal and exterior lives. Inyour films a miser experiences, and in the process of doing so, there seems to be moment inwhich personal become they put forth a new type of humanism. Like ies, tragedies, anguishes, and other feelings a modern-day, cinematic Holden Caulfield, public. And there's also redemption, through love and a scene in Reygadas seeks the authenticity of unme intimacy. There's I find quite compelling a in the diated experience. Steering away from the Silent Light, film about personal relationships involv predominance of narrative and profession tight community of Mennonites inChihuahua, a on the al acting in film, Reygadas has developed a ing a family bathing in pool. Can you elaborate and on moving and arresting body of work seem issue of making what's private public making ingly devoid of artifice. visible those private emotions? : a It's all Reygadas's two most recent shorts have C R It's all consequence of action. about enriched his repertoire of techniques and spontaneity forme; Inever put theory before practice. scene inSilent subject matter: Serenghettif a montage of I'm thinking concretely of that bathing views of a women's soccer match, and Este Light? all wantedI was to transmit the sense of peace es mi reino, a 12-minute film (for Revoluci?n, and quiet that a family might experience when engag a such a compilation of shorts commemorating the ing ina daily ritual in place of continuing beauty, as a bicentenary of the Mexican Revolution) that as that pool. These are feelings Imust have had and exposes the paradoxes of community and child, I've had moments of complete plenitude individual freedom, celebration, and melan tranquility, where nothing but the present mattered. : to attain such choly in Mexican society. He seldom talks J C But do you think it's possible about his work, and theorizes about it even a state through collective experiences? Your characters own so for in less; he prefers instead to let his films evince seem wrapped in their emotions, when, from the ideas and experiences he wants to con stance, suffering turns outward, it's manifested same with their vey. Regardless, we met at his six-acre prop one character to another; the joy. never even this. erty in Ocotitl?n, Morelos?a village an hour CR: I'm sorry, I've thought of me outside of Mexico City where he is building I just don't think it's my forte. For community is a house?and talked about music, literature, nothing but the sum of individuals. Of course society and film. Our conversation made itapparent as a whole has its own laws and such, but rather than to read Elias to me that for Reygadas, the road ahead is trying to reflect that inmy films, I prefer ? wide and clear. Canetti's Crowds and Power. What I'm interested in ?Jos? Castillo not dogmatically, but on an emotional level?are those This content downloaded from 128.95.104.109 on Wed, 24 Sep 2014 22:14:27 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FILM / CARLOS REYGADAS 73 brief moments inwhich the truth is experienced. The all music had to follow a given tempo! It's the same truth is never absolute; it's approached almost tangen as saying each page of a script equals a minute in the tially. Declaring a philosophical, religious, or social truth film. That's why even though Hollywood films can be will turn it into dogma and therefore will prevent itfrom comedies, dramas, or whatever, they all have exactly being experienced as real; itwill always be normative. the same structure. The characters and plots might On the contrary, what feels real is poetic, ineffable, change, but the films are all alike; people find repeti open-ended. Truth, by definition, is intangible. tion comforting, that's why the formula is successful. JC: Inverting Carlos Monsiv?is's phrase "only Anyway, although it takes me a few days to write the the fleeting prevails," what seems permanent tends screenplay, it does take me a while?a few months, to be contingent, temporary. sometimes a year?to decide where I'm going to set it CR: Exactly. I've always hated pronouncements, and what the film's engine, or central motor, will be. In militancy based on slogans, religious dogmas. Ethics are Silent Light the engine was the idea of death by emo the result of personal decisions; you ask yourself ques tional pain. There'd be a lotof intensity around the idea tions and try to solve them at a particular moment. of infidelity, in a moralistic sense. J C : Ethics become manifest inyour characters' J C :Meaning that you don't believe in infidelity? personal experiences. They hark back to Shakespeare's You don't seem to judge the possibility of being multi and Dostoyevsky's archetypes. How do their moral di amorous in the film. Your ethical position regarding the lemmas unfold? How do you arrive at your characters' character's being in love with two people is neutral. ethics? CR: It's curious, when you think about all this, C R : It's a silly answer, but basically, via my imag you understand why religion promotes monogamy? ination. But Idon't think like a novelist; if I tried towrite ifs complex. a novel it'd be a complete disaster. I'm terrible at con J C :Yes, it's people's way of resolving dilemmas ventional screenwriting.