Los Muertos

Vargas comes out of prison. He served a long sentence; what he did before going in is implied in the first scene and never stated. Outside, he sets off to find his daughter. He takes a bus, does a few things in a town, then buys a boat and goes up the river. The journey is long. The camera watches him: rowing, fishing, walking in the forest, killing a goat. There is almost no speech. Lisandro Alonso writes and directs. Argentino Vargas plays the part; he is not a professional actor and the character was written for him. The form rests on the long take. The scenes run without cutting and the daily work is shown entirely; the narrative does not skip it. The opening is a single moving shot through the forest and is the most discussed passage; what it shows only becomes clear afterwards. The narrative explains nothing. Why Vargas went to prison, what his relationship with his daughter is, and what will happen in the end are not said. Lisandro Alonso is a known figure of the new Argentine cinema and this counts among the purest examples of his manner. It is short, about seventy eight minutes. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema and minimal narrative. Who it is not for: nothing happens, there is no dialogue, the film answers no questions, and one scene of an animal being killed is real.