Eureka (2023)

 

Director Lisandro Alonso

Alonso on the set

EUREKA                   B                                                                                                                Argentina  France  Mexico  Germany  Portugal  Switzerland  Great Britain  (147 mi)  2023  d: Lisandro Alonso

The memory of man is uncertain.  There’s little difference between what you think you are and what you really are.                                                                                                                         —Maya el Coronel (Chiara Mastroianni)

Born in Buenos Aires in 1975, Lisandro Alonso studied for three years at the Fundación Universidad del Cine, working as an assistant director and sound designer until making his first feature in 2001, founding his own production company 4L to produce his own films, where all of his features have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, including La Libertad (Freedom) (2001), Los Muertos (2004), and Liverpool (2008), aptly named the Lonely Men Trilogy, blending traditions of documentary with narrative film as each explores loneliness in the solitary lives of the rural poor by following a near wordless journey of isolated protagonists in remote regions who barely utter a word as they journey through unchartered territory that may as well be the end of the world.  One of the director’s interests is to confront the viewer with primitive ways of life that are as far removed from civilization as possible, where the mysterious world they live in becomes the central focus of the film.  Working almost exclusively with non-professional actors, he decided to work with Danish actor Viggo Mortensen in the historical drama Jauja (2014), set in 19th century Denmark and Argentina, exploring themes of eroticism and existentialism as it moves from a deadpan western into a hypnotic, trance-like odyssey, greatly enhanced by the lush color photography from Aki Kaurismäki’s cinematographer Timo Salminen.  Premiering in 2023 at Cannes in the Cannes Premiėre section, where it was overshadowed by all the press following Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), this film was shot in Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Mexico, where Alonso has discovered a new technique of superimposing screen images into dissolves that fade into new images, while continuing his practice of using long, uninterrupted shots, often in lengths greater than 7 to 10 minutes per shot, so this is a hypnotically slow film style.  Everyone talked about the frigid working conditions shooting Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2015), as it was mentioned in nearly every review, but temperatures on this film got down to 30 below when shooting at night, regularly freezing the equipment, with Timo Salminen collapsing at one point, as his lungs shut down from the freezing cold, where he was taken away in an ambulance, replaced temporarily by Mauro Herce, so what was originally intended to be three weeks extended to two months, while also dealing with Covid protocols, but those same voices are silent here, which only accentuates just how subjective film criticism can be.  Reuniting with Viggo Mortensen in the opening segment, while also working with Chiara Mastroianni, who is like the reincarnation of Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), recalling the black and white cinematography of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), this film explores the ways in which Native people inhabit their specific environments, living in communities that remain marginalized, with limited access to resources and opportunities, frequently overrun by disillusionment and despair, creating an uncompromising portrayal of Native American life.  Spanning different time periods and continents, Alonso’s elusive and at times almost hallucinatory film is an extraordinarily rich, open-ended work of what the director describes as “uncertain conclusions,” perhaps exploring the space between dream and myth, brimming with ambiguous allusions and unexpected associations.  Like all of Alonso’s films, viewers are given a vaguely elusive idea of what we are witnessing, moving from genre to mysticism, featuring characters who have nothing to lose as they are so completely lost in themselves, given a dreamlike canvas to work with, aspiring to its own transcendence.    

For the second time following Jauja, Viggo Mortensen and Viilbjørk Malling Agger play father and daughter, captured in a heavily stylized, black and white Native American western along the Mexico and U.S. border in the 1870’s, drawing us into the imaginary world of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, which describes the violence of Western expansion and frontier life, the massacres that took place, and the utter absence of laws to protect people, with Mortensen tracking down his daughter in a lawless town where Mastroianni is the gun-slinging owner of a saloon filled with trigger-happy cowboys, drunken Indians, and half-naked prostitutes, shooting the men holding his daughter, only to discover an unexpected twist where what we are watching is a serial installment of a TV show being watched in contemporary times.  It’s a clever shift, traversing time and space, telling three different stories in three different times, suddenly finding ourselves on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest regions in America, a place Alonso has visited several times, but this is the first time he’s shot a film in the United States, which feels like a notable change, as he’s broadening his horizons while still maintaining his infatuation with isolated places and the toll it takes on those living in such remote places.  This is a fascinating study of a lone Native American police officer, Officer Debonna (Alaina Clifford), as we follow her while she meticulously makes her rounds on night patrol in the snow while regularly checking in with dispatch, which consists of the search for a child, the arbitration of a domestic conflict, traffic incidents, and a casino shooting, where reinforcements are not available, so the young woman has to improvise and adapt to overcome the problems alone.  It also simultaneously explores the life of her niece Sadie Lapointe, a young Native American woman who coaches high school basketball, yet is also guided by her grandfather’s tribal wisdom, able to achieve an altered reality, like something out of Carlos Castaneda.  The aching loneliness of life on a desolate reservation has never been more apparent, creating a disconnect and emotional void that simply can’t be filled, leading to alcoholism, drug abuse, inexplicable violence, and heightened suicide levels, which are more than double that of the mainstream population, and the highest suicide rate of any population group in the United States (The Issue of High Native American Suicide Rates).  Alonso tackles this subject head-on, refusing to shy away from the obvious discomfort, as it’s part of the challenge of living on a reservation, which is such a remote geographical region, literally cut off from the rest of the world.  Depicted with a raw honesty, Alonso adopts a near documentary approach, offering a searing observational realism that also takes us into the Amazon rainforests during the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1970’s, with elements of magical realism where a large CGI jabiru stork seems to transport us into the different realms, posing metaphysical questions about colonial influences on native peoples, establishing mysterious connections between the passage of time and the different cultures who have inhabited these remote regions, cut off from their traditions, where society today is not that different from what was going on hundreds of years ago, as tolerance for these cultures is no more accepted now as then, still having to deal with widespread violence, corruption, and ignorance.  In a time when there were no laws, the power resided with the fastest guns, which has now been passed on to those that make the rules or authoritatively sign the nefarious deals, suggesting not much has changed, calling into question the very idea of progress.   

Recalling Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2016) and 2018 Top Ten Film List #1 The Rider, both of which were shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, with the director living there for four years, yet also Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River (2017), which was shot on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, Brooke Pepion Swaney’s 2022 Top Ten List #9 Daughter of the Lost Bird, which tackles the systematic adoption of Native children to outside communities, and Kent Mackenzie’s devastating urban portrait in The Exiles (1961), an early 1960’s film about American Indians adapting to the congested city environment of Los Angeles, which features an ungodly amount of alcohol consumption, where city Indians bring with them the same social issues from the reservation to the city.  Giving thanks to an international collective of independent voices like Roberto Minervini, Kelly Reichardt, Corneliu Porumboiu, and Dennis Lim, author and director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, this is about as far removed from the films of John Ford as you can get, literally redefining spaces that are generally absent from history and the world of cinema, becoming an elliptical meditation on the experiences of indigenous communities across the Americas.  A film that resists easy categorization, dreamily moving in and out of time periods, with no illuminating explanations within the film, the connecting link is people who have been marginalized by society, who have sought isolation, not that they had a choice, but it offers a protection against the toxic influences of the more heavily populated regions who maintain authoritative and political control, still posing a problem to them.  Death is a pervasive theme, as it invades these isolated spaces, often coming out of nowhere, like a mysterious force, as there aren’t nearby hospitals or medical centers, so people are largely on their own, where the life expectancy is considerably lower for residents of the Pine Ridge reservation (by twenty years!), the lowest anywhere in the United States, while also plagued by an 80 to 90% unemployment rate, with more than 80% of residents suffering from alcoholism (described as liquid genocide), where the persistent problems are rooted in America’s colonial history (Life on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation), standing defiantly against the corrosive forces of history, yet subject to the laws of nature.  The film is essentially an exploratory journey through time, like an undiscovered frontier, where some obviously get lost along the way, like buried secrets, losing contact with their own identity, where the natural scenery couldn’t be more intoxicating, as we follow a group mining for gold in the rivers, also a ceremony of recounting dreams out in the jungle, yet a common element is a pervasive loneliness that leaves them feeling strangely distant and alienated from themselves and their culture.  Thought-provoking and mesmerizingly beautiful, an enigmatic work that simply doesn’t look like other films, penetrating into mythical spaces, co-written by Alonso with Martín Caamaño and Fabián Casas, delving into themes of loss and the quest for personal redemption, painting a picture of the harsh realities facing indigenous communities, who routinely deal with poverty and neglect.  Despite their profound connection to the land, indigenous peoples are always moving, transcending the bounds of their physical state, where their ancestral beliefs and mysticism have been crushed by Manifest Destiny and its devastating aftereffects, erasing their connection to the land while shattering their cultural equilibrium.

2018 Top Ten Film List #1 The Rider

Brady Jandreau on the set with director Chloé Zhao

director Chloé Zhao

THE RIDER               A                    

USA  (104 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Chloé Zhao

An essential work, an elegiac and ferociously personal film shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, home of over 30,000 Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe members, not far from the Badlands, one of the most impoverished areas in the United States, where an endless landscape reveals the vast emptiness, but also a sacred beauty about something Native Americans hold dear, living in harmony with nature, where riding horses across the open plains is about the most natural thing in the world.  Honoring a way of life that has existed for countless generations, the film is based on the real-life experiences of Brady Jandreau, an Indian rodeo cowboy who at age 20 survived a near-fatal head injury after being trampled by a horse in 2016.  Playing himself (though the last name is changed to Blackburn), he is a handsome hero, showing the full range of his character throughout, generous to a fault, kind and open-hearted, with a fierce protective streak for his younger 15-year old sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who is autistic, yet easily remains one of the more endearing and cheerfully upbeat characters in recent memory, while his father Wayne (Tim Jandreau) is sternly authoritative, yet financially challenged, renting a trailer out in the open plains, where it’s not easy making a living in such a desolate place.  Fueled by poverty and addiction, the unemployment rate on the reservation hovers around 80%, the suicide rate is over four times the national average, while 49% of the population is on Food Stamps.  Life expectancy, 48 years for men and 52 for women, is the second-lowest in the western hemisphere, behind only the poorest nation, Haiti, tuberculosis and diabetes rates are eight times the national averages, while the cervical cancer rate is five times more than the U.S. average.  The infant mortality rate is 300% higher than the national average and the teen suicide rate is 150% higher than the national average.  Addiction is endemic, where up to two-thirds of adults live with alcoholism, while one in four children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, a neurological birth defect that causes irreversible physical and emotional defects that permanently scar the child.  Most attribute the problem to a small town that sits 250 yards across the South Dakota state line, Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 12, which has been sitting there for over 100 years with four convenience stores that sell approximately 4 million cans of beer per year pouring exclusively into the reservation, which amounts to 11,000 cans of beer per day, literally feeding and profiting off of Indian addiction, despite the fact that it has been a dry reservation by tribal ordinance for over 120 years.  Recently the Nebraska state liquor commission voted to temporarily revoke all four licenses to sell liquor in Whiteclay, while in September 2017, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled unanimously to keep Whiteclay’s liquor stores closed (Liquid genocide: alcohol destroyed Pine Ridge reservation – then they ...).  While that is a cultural aside, it generates a picture of poverty unlike any other, setting the stage for why young male pride means so much to an Indian nation. 

Jandreau was one of several Lakota cowboys the director met while shooting her low-budget debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015), spending four years on the Pine Ridge Reservation making that film.  Watching him train unbroken horses, however, mesmerized by how easily he calms wild horses, Zhao could see he has a gift, suggesting they make a film together, where much of the strongest footage allows viewers to see him in his element, guided by his own instincts, beautifully capturing the majestic quality of the animal, as throughout history, even before the arrival of the white man, Lakota Sioux Indians have revered horses, leading nomadic lives following rivers and migrating herds of buffalo throughout all seasons of the year.  Stripped down to its essentials, Jandreau epitomizes the hard-scrabble way of life that exists here, who at a tender young age has reaped the rewards of rodeo riding, collecting ribbons and medals and prize money, along with the cowboy accoutrements collected along the way, belts, boots, chaps, ropes, and Stetson hats, along with signature jackets that memorialize certain events.  Dressed in his cowboy finest, Jandreau is the spitting image of frontier strength and independence, knowing things only a handful of others can appreciate, among an exclusive club of young Indian rodeo heroes, seen in all the cowboy magazines, someone kids can look up to, a down to earth mythical hero that lives right there amongst them.  But that all changed after suffering such a serious injury, cracking his skull, requiring a surgically implanted metal plate, leaving a large gash on his head, where early on we see him using a knife to gruesomely pick out the stitches in his head.  Some of the aftereffects include seizures that travel down to his right hand, freezing up on him, where he can’t unloosen his grip, forced to peel his fingers off one by one.  The opening sequence, however, is an experimental montage of stomping hooves and the defiant independence of wild horses running free, perhaps idealized in their beauty, which turns out to be a dream leading to the opening credits, with Jandreau lying in his hospital bed.  It may feel improbable for a young Chinese-American woman to have such complete access to an Indian reservation, but she claims it’s easy for her to be accepted, eventually fitting right in, as she poses no threat.  Born in Beijing, Zhao was sent to boarding school in London before finishing high school in America, inspired by viewing Wong Kar-wai’s HAPPY TOGETHER (1997), watching it again before film shoots, eventually attending film school at NYU.  While Jandreau, his family and friends, all play themselves, this resembles the fictionalized documentaries of Jia Zhang-ke, revealing a searing authenticity with brief flashes of fiction thrown in to change or alter the mood.  In this case, it’s almost entirely real-life, still recovering from his injury, with a bare-bones script written by the director to add narrative fluidity, but very few alterations, one of which involves Jandreau’s best friend, Lane Scott, another heavily decorated rodeo bull rider who was left paralyzed, unable to speak after an unfortunate accident.  In real-life, this occurred as a result of a 2013 car crash, but the film romanticizes his injury, suggesting a bull rolled over him in competition, where he remains a mythical hero.  With the words “Say I won’t, and I will” tattooed on his back, Lane is a central figure in Brady’s life, both small town heroes and cut from the same cloth.  The patience he displays in visits to the rehab center with Lane are beyond belief, able to read letters conveyed through his fingers, extending them to words and phrases, where the genuine warmth and affection on display express something beyond friendship, beyond words, that could only be described as a profound and inexpressible love.        

What makes this film so unique is the sacred territory it inhabits, like entering the Terrence Malick realm, where horses and the open plains define what it is to be human for a Lakota Sioux Indian, a thread that runs throughout this film, which is heartbreakingly real.  Like his friend Lane, Jandreau’s rodeo days are over, or so he’s told over and over again, yet he knows that he’s meant to ride horses, “just as a horse is meant to run across the prairie,” where he has a will of an athlete to overcome all obstacles, to reach the winner’s circle, to show what it means to be a champion.  Jandreau feels like it’s in his blood, that it’s as essential as the air he breathes, as it’s the one thing he excels at, reaching transcendent heights in the rodeo ring, if only for a brief moment, where he exudes courage and an indomitable spirit, refusing to allow mere mortality to keep him from reaching the hallowed grounds of the gods.  Not sure if anyone has loved something as much as this kid loves horses, dreaming of them night and day, where the intoxicating visualization by cinematographer Joshua James Richards, the director’s life partner, remains ravishingly elevated throughout, with melancholic music by Nathan Halpern, turning this film into an elegiac memoriam for all that’s been lost, as after reaching such exalted heights, with Brady and Lane watching video footage over and over again of their rodeo exploits, reliving their proudest moments, Brady has to descend back down to the lowly state of working a soulless job as a supermarket clerk, stocking the shelves, doing dish work detail, mopping up the grounds, where it’s a humiliating challenge just to be an ordinary human living on a pittance part-time wage.  Yet in the same breath, the time he spends with his mentally challenged sister is priceless, listening to her sing songs, promising to look after her, yet she’s the one that places little stick-em gold stars on his body as he sleeps.  Brady continually argues with his tough guy father, who calls him stubborn, refusing to listen to anybody, who thinks he has a death wish, yet without a word one day buys his son a spectacularly beautiful unridden horse that he’s got his heart set on, a gesture so movingly open and revealing.  If only the road to heaven were paved by good intentions.  But this film is also filled with heartbreak, as near the beginning, Wayne is forced to sell Brady’s favorite horse, which is like giving away your best friend.  And just when Brady’s health progress looks promising, as he’s back training horses, something he loves to do, his hand freezes up, where he can’t let go of the reins, allowing a horse to bump him in the head, causing a horrible setback, where he literally can’t get back on a horse again.  Take away the thing someone loves the most and see how they respond.  Particularly in this poverty-ridden culture, where there are so few role models that kids look up to, Brady’s bold heroism becomes his internalized anguish, his cross to bear, though perhaps also his salvation.  Taught to fight through pain and weakness, he struggles against admitting any signs of vulnerability, yet ultimately the film is about scars and broken spirits, expressed with such beautiful lyricism and tenderness, a picture of poetic spirituality, where what it means to be a man shifts 360 degrees literally overnight, where it’s like learning to walk again, or imagine John Wayne in a John Ford western suddenly unable to ride a horse, as it poses a risk to his own life.  A profoundly affecting work, unvarnished, void of artifice, probing under the surface, finding an altogether new language to express the unimaginable, Brady Jandreau is one of the untold stories that cinema can bring to light, with Zhao admirably doing him justice, finding his genuine nature, exploring that core inner realm of pride and glory, offering a sobering portrait of an identity crisis that literally asks and answers the existential question of what it means to be an Indian in today’s world after the things you do best have been stripped away, essentially a mirror image of the plight of the American Indians after the inexhaustible reach of their land was taken away by a policy of genocide and Manifest Destiny.