Alcarràs

 

Director Carla Simón

Simón on the set

ensemble cast

ALCARRÀS              B                                                                                                                Spain  Italy  (120 mi)  2022  d: Carla Simón

I don’t sing for my voice or the dawn or a new day.                                                                       I sing for my friend who lost his life for me.    

The grandfather has the scythe and uses it to cut the wheat.                                                    And with the wheat he forms a sheaf and chooses the grain.                                         

I don’t sing for my voice, a clear sky, or a sea breeze.                                                                     I sing for my land, solid ground, beloved land.

—Catalan song sung by Rogelio (Joseph Abad) and his granddaughter Iris (Ainet Jounou)

Something of a surprise winner of the Golden Bear (1st Place) at the Berlin Film Festival in 2022, which also featured Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade (Avec amour et acharnement) (2022) that won the Silver Bear for Best Director, and also François Ozon’s Peter von Kant (2022), among others, this was a box office hit in Spain, yet what really stands out is the awareness and sensitivity to the subject matter and all that entails.  The first Catalan-speaking film to win the award, the shooting took place in Alcarràs, in the northeast province of Lleida in Catalonia, Spain, with its own language and unique local customs, Catalonia feels distinct from the rest of Spain, a culture that can be traced back to the 8th century (Culture and language - Catalonia), where more than 90% of the people in the region can still read and speak the language, where it is the ninth most spoken language in the European Union.  The culture has experienced something of a revival since the death of Franco, who abolished Catalan autonomy in 1938, becoming a battleground during Spain’s Civil War and a target for ethnic cleansing, leading to a contemporary Catalan independence movement, with roots in Catalan nationalism, challenging the autonomy of the nation’s current constitution.  In 2017, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont initiated an independence referendum that the Spanish government declared illegal, sending in the police to close polling stations, seize ballots, and suppress the vote, creating images of Spanish riot police beating Catalan voters (Catalan referendum: Clashes with police leave nearly 900 ...), with charges of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds brought against Puigdemont and others in his government, who fled to Belgium as fugitives from justice.  Spain’s congress recently passed a highly contentious amnesty bill that may allow those exiled separatists to return (Spanish congress passes amnesty law for Catalan separatists), as advocacy for an independent Catalonia has lost popularity.  A recent Spanish television documentary, Negrers: La Catalunya Esclavista (Slavers: Catalonia and the Slave Trade), confronted Catalonia’s history in the African slave trade in the early to mid 19th century (Catalonia confronts past racism after slave trade ...), as the region was involved in the transportation of 700,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean, where that income was largely responsible for the industrial development in Catalonia and the economic boon in Barcelona.  It is in this backdrop that the film was made, making no reference to political divisions or any independence movement, instead it is a much quieter, more expansive exposé of rural agricultural divisions, reflecting the incursion of capitalism, where larger economic forces are driving out local farmers, who are being forced to sell and/or evacuate their land, an inevitability they can’t seem to escape, showcasing the importance of heritage and the erasure of identity, becoming a prototype for the perils of adapting to the modern age.  Not structured around any real narrative, the director establishes her own rhythm as she chooses to wander between different scenes in the daily life of family members with the idea of offering an all-encompassing social portrait, where the innocence of the young children and the magical aspects of life in the countryside are contrasted against the harsh reality the adults are facing who risk the extinction of a traditional way of life that is still struggling to survive.  

This is the second of an unfinished trilogy on Simón’s early childhood, following her debut feature SUMMER 1993 (2017), which exposed the existential upheaval of a six year old girl from Barcelona moving to the Catalan countryside after the death of her parents to live with her aunt.  In stark contrast to the heated political theater, bearing more of a resemblance to Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical Roma (2018), or John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), this near documentary exposé shines light on the emotional dignity and humanist aspects of growing up in Catalonia, as the director did, where her family has cultivated peaches in Alcarràs for generations.  Following a single family of farmers living a most unassuming life, Simón accents the minute details that define each of the family members, and while sharing a common familial bond, they have distinctly different personalities and character traits that slowly become familiarized with viewers, offering a single theme exposed from different prisms.  Shooting with only one camera, no single scene stands out, no needless explanations, and no daring visual aesthetic, becoming instead a collective mosaic rendered with authenticity, where there’s no trace of artifice, and like her earlier film, this is made up of inhabitants from the region, where the director’s sister Berta Pipó is the only professional cast member.  Told from an emotional remove, much of the information is conveyed indirectly, unfolding at a leisurely pace, opening with a montage of miles of orchards, with children playing in the fields inside an abandoned car pretending it’s a space ship until the loud noise of machinery interrupts their play.  Suddenly, as the car is removed by a giant industrial crane, the children feel as if their home has been taken away from them, mirroring the predominate theme of the expanding drama, as their lives must incorporate the challenge of the unexpected and live with a fear of the unknown.  With their home situated alongside a peach orchard which the family has worked for generations, they once hid the landowner’s family against Franco’s purge during the war, and in return only asked permission to farm the fields, a verbal agreement, which was all that was ever needed, but after the landowner dies, his son has different ideas, as small farms are unsustainable and the price of fruit is dropping, so without any binding written document, they are now pursuing a different direction, cutting down the peach trees to install solar panels, which “produce money without effort,” an idea that is foreign to most farmers, having only until the end of summer before the new owner uproots their lives and reclaims his land.  This is mostly a class distinction, as there are occasional protests against the corporate conglomerations that are reducing prices and grabbing up all the land, as the winds of change are in the air with the struggling farmers reeling under poverty, where the destruction of the peach orchard recalls the ending in Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, though that represented the economic demise of a fallen aristocracy.  Living under the patriarchal leadership are three generations of the Solé family, grandfather Rogelio (Joseph Abad), who admits to never having a deed, as his father acquired the land on a handshake, and his son Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) and his wife Dolor (Anna Otin), with two teenage children, Mariona (Xènia Roset) and Roger (Albert Bosch), and younger Iris (Ainet Jounou), seen playing with her two cousins in the opening scene.  Dialogue is scarce in this film, which is largely an observant study of how people once lived a simple life of hard work living off the land, which adds meaning and value to their existence, where there is a proud sense that the land will provide, which are also recurring themes in Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine’s The Blazing Sun (Siraa Fil-Wadi) (1954) and The Land (al-Ard) (1969).   

Not far away is the extended family, Quimet’s sister Nati (Montse Oró) and her husband Cisco (Carles Cabós), with their two young twins Pau and Pere (Isaac and Joel Rovira), who are Iris’s playmates, while another gay older sister Glòria (Berta Pipó) is living in Barcelona.  Nati and Cisco have a more open approach to solar panels, eventually ingratiating themselves with the owner, causing a deep division within the family who feel they are undermining farmers and selling them out, where Quimet, in particular, is enraged, literally disowning them, creating an emotional vacuum for Iris, who misses her cousins.  These little fractured dramas exist throughout the film, with little detours and asides, and various subplots that feel fragmentary, where there’s no emotional core holding it all together, as Quimet’s angry resentment and short-tempered behavior is counterproductive, causing unnecessary harm, making life impossible within the family, instigating constant petty disputes, even coming to blows with his own brother-in-law, which only alienates them (and us) even further.  This patriarchal meltdown is a slow burn of frustration, passed down to the disappointed son Roger, yet what really bothers them is, unlike time-honored traditions, they have relatively little say in the matter, where their petulant behavior leads to a very decisive moment when Dolor slaps them both, suggesting she’s had enough, a dramatically impactive moment that alters the social landscape without a single, solitary word being spoken.  The observant Mariona may be a stand-in for the director, seen comforting her grandfather, who blames himself for their predicament, often shielding him from the wrath of the family, as she grows equally appalled by the adult behavior, realizing they make mistakes, as there’s no effort whatsoever to attempt any sense of cooperation, where they might work out an acceptable agreement with their neighbors, who offer them the opportunity to use the land to work with solar panels rather than fruit, with other family members more willing than Quimet to adjust to the changing times, instead his stubborn, unwavering response always seems so self-destructive, where the intolerable landowners are viewed as the enemy of the people.  Oftentimes kids can be the equalizer, attending the same schools and social events, where they can bring the opposing forces together, but that doesn’t happen here, instead the sense of anticipatory fear is overwhelming, like the underlying dread of a horror movie, as we always understand that the end is near, like a coming apocalypse, with all its implications.  There are intimate moments, where the family is seen singing together or dancing, expressed in an affecting and surprisingly low-key manner, while they also attend a traditional Catalan celebration involving competitive drinking, dance, and a talent show.  In the humanist tradition of Italian neorealism, like Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, and loosely inspired by Ermanno Olmi's THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS (1978), where there’s a spiritual connection to those that toil the land (though lacking Olmi's sociological complexity), the Solé family is engaged in a struggle for survival.  Quimet and Roger join protests over falling fruit prices that lower the value of the land and allow rich property owners to buy it cheaply, which sparked the violent protests in Catalonia in 2017.  The ownership of property, which is associated with historic inequities dating back to Medieval times, has always been an unresolved issue in Spain, where this plays out as a postwar, social justice alternative to Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers (Madres paralelas) (2021), both offering no remedies, yet the personal becomes the political in what amounts to healing therapy for the nation, as it begins a conversation between what the past demanded and hopes for a brighter future yet to come.