Zama (2018)
Dir. and written by Lucrecia Martel
Based on Zama by Antonio di Benedetto
Starring Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lola Dueñas, Matheus
Nachtergaele, Juan Minujín
ZAMA is a curious,
quiet little period piece which is so subtle and unpushy that I didn't entirely
realize it was a comedy until maybe halfway through, and didn't realize it was
a horror movie for a while longer, though in retrospect it's very much both,
albeit in the most dry, deadpan, and existential iterations of those two genres
possible. It's the story --or, perhaps, the anti-story-- of Don Diego de Zama
(Daniel Giménez Cacho, CRONOS and WE ARE WHAT WE ARE, beyond perfection in a
role which requires him to paradoxically overwhelm the audience by underplaying
everything), a minor Spanish official in colonial-era Paraguay, desperate to be
transferred out of this rural backwater, but miserable enough to be unable to
avoid self-sabotage before that can happen.
The primary tone,
then, is one of crushing stagnation, the slow-motion horror of being gradually
buried alive in a thousand tiny setbacks. For the longest time, the movie
is basically the DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOIS set in 18th century Paraguay,
with Zama's many pathetic attempts to escape his miserable purgatory
perpetually offering a brief flicker of hope before leaving him even worse-off
than he was before, his stockpile of hope emptied just a little further. The
movie wavers close to out-and-out absurdism in the litany of indignities it lavishes on
its milquetoast protagonist, piling up his woes so gradually that they barely
register until they reach critical mass. Gradually, though, the comic insults
begin to add up in wilder and wilder ways (he's forced to move into a haunted
hotel at one point!) while the style of the film remains as blithely reserved
as ever, resulting in a disconnect which is at once very funny and quite
existentially disturbing. The sense of escalation is gradual, but as irresistible and flattening as a glacier, and by the film's end things begin to spiral out of control in increasingly blunt, visceral ways. Indeed, the final section (the film, reflecting the
apparently excellent 1956 novel it adapts, is really three mostly
self-contained chapters) suddenly plunges into a vivid, desperate jungle nightmare that I'm required by
law and tradition to compare to AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD, finally paying off
the first two acts' gradually escalating sense of human-crushing chaos while
losing none of the film's quiet potency.
All
throughout, director Lucretia Martel (LA CIENAGA, THE HEADLESS WOMAN) maintains
a disinterested reserve, as though the camera barely finds Zama interesting
enough to bother following him, instead peering curiously around its
protagonist into the world of colonialist horrors barely noticed by him, but
which can hardly fail to disturb a modern viewer (most notably the ubiquitous
enslaved native Paraguayans, who the story and characters completely ignore but
the camera finds pointedly relevant). Zama, who can't even control his life,
barely manages to stay at the center of his own story, with Martel's unfussy
deep focus shots and vivid evocation of a bygone world (which is, perhaps, not
so alien to our own as we would like to believe; note the thoroughly modern
musical choices) filling in the ellipses of the go-nowhere narrative with a
rich, endlessly fascinating tableau of life.
Martel has
made only three other movies, all of which seem to be highly esteemed, but none
of which I’ve ever seen. They’re definitely on the list now, though; I mean
look at this lady. I like her style:
A little research
suggests that she’s most known for her caustic, deadpan satire at the expense
of her native Argentina’s bourgeois upper class, and you could certainly read
something of that into ZAMA, if you were so inclined. There’s something very revealing about the film’s ostensible focus on Zama’s stagnating ennui
in the face of the shocking brutality going on all around him. He’s a laughingstock,
yes; but our chuckles at his expense catch in our throat when we see the
horrors of the system this man is casually supporting. That he is completely
and utterly ambivalent to that system pushes the discomfort even further; it
would be appalling but comfortingly comprehensible if he were a fervent believer, but
to see such a vacuous, indifferent man perpetrate such horrors with halfhearted
disinterest is singularly chilling… and easy to relate to. Zama isn’t an actively cruel
man; he’s too consumed by bored self-pity to take sadistic pleasure in having
slaves whipped or natives executed. Instead he barely even notices. The savagery
he’s taking part in doesn’t even register in the face of his all-consuming moping.
And are we really so different? The period setting merely allows Martel to quietly
push the audience to notice the cruelty of a system that daily life inures us
to. If Zama were a modern-day bureaucrat disinterestedly crushing the poor and
vulnerable with the faceless, impersonal power of the state, we probably wouldn’t
even notice it. We’d take at face value that his wounded self-esteem really is
what the movie finds interesting. Because he would look like us.
Anyway, my real point here is that the movie contains
some of the best damn llama acting I've ever seen in my life. I mean, this fucking lama has
enough charisma to make The Rock look like Ryan O’Neal.* Poor Daniel Giménez
Cacho gives the best performance of his career, and still gets upstaged by an
errant llama (you'll know it when you see it). Perfectly fitting, I guess, for
this particular vision.
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