The Aura

A taxidermist with epilepsy calls the brief clarity that precedes a seizure the aura. All his life he has planned robberies and carried out none. On a hunting trip in Patagonia he shoots a man by accident and finds himself in the middle of a real robbery the dead man had prepared. The film is not interested in the robbery. It is interested in a planner who cannot execute: the hero calculates every detail perfectly and cannot account for people. The film dismantles his faith in his own intelligence step by step. The form is slow and cold: forest, fog, long silences, and a sound design that breaks apart during the seizures. The tension comes not from pursuit but from a man being in the wrong place. Fabián Bielinsky wrote and directed. It is his second and last film. In 2006, a month before he was to present it in Edinburgh, he died of a heart attack in a hotel in São Paulo where he was working on a commercial. He was forty-seven. Ricardo Darín leads. The film was submitted as Argentina's Oscar entry and won six Silver Condors from the Argentine film critics, including Best Film. Who it is for: viewers who like slow crime films and Darín. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. The film runs past two hours, is deliberately slow, and gives its explanations late.