Jose Teodoro -- Miss Bala: Nightmare State

Miss Bala: Nightmare State
Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo upends his filmmaking to show a country torn apart
by José Teodoro
Film Comment



Most existences on earth are marginal; the majority of people live on the edges of some kind of war. That the woman and man at the center of Miss Bala swing into each other’s orbit is itself no great coincidence. She’s Laura (Stephanie Sigman), the cheerful 23-year-old daughter of a Tijuana clothing merchant, and he’s Lino (Noe Hernandez), a taciturn, hard-eyed, soft-voiced drug trafficker about whose past we glean almost nothing. Both hail from humble if not desperate backgrounds; both aspire to transcend social determinism via archetypal routes to glamour and power: just as Lino asserts himself through terror and illegal commerce, Laura, however haphazardly, hopes to embody someone’s notion of the ideal woman by entering the Miss Baja California competition. Her first, fleeting encounter with him occurs when a dance party is turned into a massacre by Lino and his confederates. They meet again when she is so naïve as to seek out the police for help. In some perverse variation on the romantic comedy, the two keep crossing paths. Laura spends much of Miss Bala in a state of shock, while Lino seems to quickly intuit how best to exploit her allure while ostentatiously exchanging favors. He can ensure she wins the Miss Baja crown; she can serve as a gorgeous decoy in his criminal dealings.

A fascinating about-face for Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo, Miss Bala—co-written by Naranjo and Mauricio Katz and loosely based on actual events—surveys the current state of play in the drug war and offers commentary through a procession of absurdities, ironies, and largely uncontextualized mayhem. The gangsters and the DEA agents are equally menacing and seem to favor the same black SUVs; a beauty contest audience bursts into wild applause for a catatonic contestant; a flaming tire rolls by during an urban shoot-out as though it has emerged from a cartoon, traversing a stretch of asphalt covered in blood, bullet casings, and gasoline. Despite an incongruous, statistics-heavy closing title card, Miss Bala can no more be reduced to a hand-wringing docudrama about the escalation of Mexico’s drug-related violence than Take Shelter can be called a treatise on overcoming mental illness. These films are personal statements about individuals ceding control to forces beyond their comprehension—personal statements that just happen to dovetail nicely with urgent social issues.

“I’d arrived at a place where I felt like I wasn’t challenging myself that much,” says Naranjo, “so I decided to do something that I really didn’t know how to do. My previous films had a little bit of social commentary, but it was from a bourgeois point of view, trying to denounce commodification or conservatism. When I started to develop Miss Bala I felt I was responding to something far more urgent that’s in the air. To the fear.” Speaking during the Toronto International Film Festival last September, by which point Miss Bala had already seen its share of plaudits and detractors, Naranjo emphasized his latest film’s conspicuous shift in both style and content from his preceding work, whether the privileged teens playing out lovers-on-the-run melodrama under a mesh of Godardian alienation techniques (the deliriously stylish and witty 2008 I’m Gonna Explode) or privileged young adults negotiating disastrous relationships (the clever but flat 2006 Drama/Mex). “The directors I admire tend to change a lot between films,” says Naranjo. “Maybe not often with regards to form, but with subject matter for sure. Before, I felt that I was a filmmaker but had yet to really show it. I trusted so deeply in the present, in improvisation. I know I’m shifting. The question now, for me, has to do with whether or not I can maintain this.”

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James Udden: Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization

[Warning: the clip of the scene below gives away major plot details]

Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization
by James Udden
Style



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Given his Janus-faced career, it was hard to know what to expect stylistically from Cuaron in Children of Men given the direct involvement of Universal. He answers almost right away in the third shot of the opening scene as to how far he is now willing to go. Expertly introduced in this single shot is a grim, dying world in which the Clive Owen character is but one small, languid part. It is a tour de force in terms of its set design, lighting, camera movement and most of all its daringly intricate orchestration of multiple animate and inanimate elements. Yet the most telling sign is the duration of the shot: this is a long take of over fifty seconds, which with almost devious subtlety leads to a most unexpected denouement, an explosion segueing to a title shot with uncanny effect. It is an impressive beginning to a film which overall deeply impressed select viewers, critics and scholars alike. Alfonso Cuaron has accomplished the seemingly impossible: he proffers a dystopian message concerning globalization, yet he does it under the auspices of one of globalization’s key cultural players — Hollywood. Yet he also accomplishes this in indelible aesthetic terms. After seemingly reverting back to more conventional form with The Prisoner of Azkaban, the long take makes a roaring return in Children of Men, with an average shot length of just over sixteen seconds per, an astonishing figure for a present-day Hollywood feature which sometimes can average less than two seconds per shot (Hollywood 122). Moreover, even if slightly shorter on average than its Spanish-language predecessor a half a decade earlier, these long takes are more complex and more accomplished in their design. As we shall see, they are too good to be true. Indeed, these long takes are contrived spectacles in their own right.

There is an overall pattern for long take in Children of Men: the more action and violence a particular scene possesses, the longer the shot duration generally becomes. This does run counter to current Hollywood norms. Many have recently noted how big-budgeted, Hollywood action films in particular tend to lead the way in faster cutting rates which are often employed for maximum impact (Bordwell, Hollywood,122, 58-159; King, New Hollywood, 246). Children of Men, of course, is not a traditional action picture, but a science fiction work with deep philosophical underpinnings. Yet during its non-action scenes often involving conversations between characters, Cuaron is more likely to use conventional editing schemes, most of all the ever reliable shot/reverse shot. Cuaron saves his most audacious long takes for the sequences where violence and action are at their highest pitch, with the longest reserved for the prolonged battle at the refugee camp at the end. Despite their reliance on long takes in lieu of “impact” editing, it is these moments in the film which seem to be most memorable.

What is most telling is how these long takes give the appearance of taking place in “real” time and “continuous” space. Cleverly disguised is how they are often multiple shots melded together digitally in post-production. The above mentioned opening scene, for example, was shot over two days, the first day covering the indoor portion in the café, while the second day involved the complicated section outdoors. However, in the finished product, the third shot begins indoors and then proceeds seamlessly outdoors, meaning somehow a single, “continuous” long take was shot over two days time. Using the café doorframe at the moment Clive Owen leaves the frame, the camera is deviously slow to catch up, and the special effects crew disguised the cut digitally in post (Fordham 34). In short, the opening scene is not three shots, but four shots disguised as three with the last being a long take under false pretenses.

This is not an isolated instance in Children of Men. The now famous scene in the automobile took two months to plan, eight days to shoot on three separate locations. The camera’s impossibly free movements in the car were in fact impossible — they were only realized by being filmed in six separate sections where often not all of the actors were present at certain stages. Once again, this was all amalgamated into a single artificial long take by digital means (Fordham 39). Claiming to replicate the feel of a documentary, this shot is also impossibly precise for any documentary shooting as events transpire. True, they did use mostly available light in a real setting, allowing every flare and reflection on the glass to remain, much like in a documentary. But no documentarian has ever had the luxury of a twin-axis doggicam rigged above a missing car roof which is then digitally filled in during post-production. The resulting camera movements would also be impossible for a documentary — in fact in a way that has never been done by fictional filmmakers either. Particularly noteworthy is the powerful effect of that moment when the camera returns to the front and Julianne Moore reappears at the right edge of the frame, now undeniably no longer among the living. Documentarians are rarely able to be that measured, and are hardly that lucky.

The longest take in the film is over seven minutes in duration, occurring during the climatic battle at the refugee camp when Theo Faron attempts to rescue the kidnapped baby. Being one of the most complex long takes ever attempted, it is in fact too complicated to be a true “long take.” Instead, this was shot at two exterior locations plus a studio; the first major section was filmed at Bushey Hall, while the second part was shot two weeks later at Upper Heyford. This particular transition was digitally disguised using the corner of a building, much like what they had done with the doorframe of the café in the pre-credit sequence (Fordham 42). Additional elements added to the seemingly real but impossible spectacle: for example, no documentarian has been so fortuitous as to follow someone just as Theo Faron passes a soldier dying in his half-severed body, yet reaching out for him with one last moaning grasp at life. The three sections combined comprise a highly calculated, and remarkably well-orchestrated game of lost and found where Theo loses the mother and child to the engulfing chaos, only to find them again in that same chaos, all within this same faux long take. Meanwhile, by scanning this dense, dreary mise-en-scene, Cuaron and Lubezki not only disguise cuts, they continue a deeper strategy seen also in Y tu mama tambien: to show a much larger world than merely the characters themselves, a world that becomes almost hyper-real due to the careful construction of the long take coupled with other stylistic devices. So spectacular are these long takes that they become spectacles themselves which became endlessly talked about by reviewers, scholars and film aficionados alike. And that appears to have been precisely the reason why they are employed in the film during those particular sequences which proved to be the most challenging.

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Robert Castle: Two Cinematic Visions of the Inca Conquest -- The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Aguirre: Wrath of God

Two Cinematic Visions of the Inca Conquest: The Royal Hunt of the Sun and Aguirre: Wrath of God
by Robert Castle
Bright Lights Film Journal



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The point of contact between Royal Hunt and Aguirre: Wrath of God is corresponding events: Atahualpa entering the courtyard in Cajamarca and an Indian approaching Aguirre's raft. The slaughter of the Inca king's imperial guard starts after the Spanish priest (Andrew Kier) has given him a Bible. Atahualpa is told that he holds the word of God, who speaks through the book. He puts the book to his ear and says that he hears nothing. Then he throws the Bible to the ground. The Spanish soldiers hidden around the courtyard emerge when the priest curses Atahualpa. The entire imperial guard, over a thousand men, are slaughtered without a single Spanish casualty.

In Aguirre, as the raft floats along a flaccid tributary of the Amazon River, Aguirre's soldiers spot a solitary canoe approaching. An old man and young woman are in the boat and subsequently brought aboard the raft. Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, just like Pizarro's priest, offers the Bible to the old man and tells him he holds the word of God. The old man, like Atahualpa, holds the Bible to his ear and then throws the book to the ground. The Spaniards, including Brother Gaspar, pierce the old man with several sword thrusts, killing him.

Aguirre, in Herzog's film, describes Cortes as his model for going against the Spanish authorities and conquering the land before him: "I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces."

Aguirre views Cortes as a rebel who defied Velasquez, Spanish governor of Cuba who ordered Cortes not to go to Mexico, and the Spanish monarchy itself. When landing in Mexico, Cortes shackled all who were not with him and burned his ships to ensure no one could desert. The Spanish expedition over the Andes into the Amazon is led by Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repullés), Francisco's brother. The extreme conditions force Gonzalo to send a party of forty on rafts downriver in search of El Dorado, led by Don Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra). After one raft is lost on a giant whirlpool and the others to a high tide, Ursua decides to return to the main force led by Pizarro. Aguirre and his henchmen take over, put Ursua on trial, and eventually hang him.

Where Pizarro sought his spiritual destiny through Atahualpa, Aguirre remains unaffected by the native Indians, who are portrayed as invisible antagonists with largely aggressive responses to the Spanish invaders (save for the two who came up to the raft in a canoe). What Aguirre finds is a world with no limits. Aguirre's world-weariness seems as inconsolable as Pizarro's in Royal Hunt, although Aguirre seeks the opposite form of meaning and fulfillment from his conquest. During his river expedition, Aguirre decrees all the land on both sides of the river theirs. His redemption comes in the form of personal empire-building. As the large raft comes to a halt in the dead waters, overrun by spider monkeys, Aguirre stands alone decrying himself the "Wrath of God" amidst the dead bodies of his followers. Aguirre seems to want to transpose his reality by this virtual conquest of the Amazon; likewise, Pizarro wants Atahualpa to resurrect himself after being strangled. Mutual delusions both.

Both films suggest Europe has run aground spiritually, as they both depict the Catholic Church and its representatives to be as bloodthirsty as the conquistadors. The Church sides cynically with the politically powerful. Brother Gaspar, for instance, does not try to save Ursua from execution. In Royal Hunt, Father Valverde signals the assault on the unarmed imperial guard. The films's respective responses to the spiritual crises divide their sensibilities. Aguirre: Wrath of God's postmodernist stance disdains psychological insight or drama. Royal Hunt of the Sun depicts Pizarro as a man torn between an old dead religion and the promise of a new revelation, an internal struggle that postmodernism rejects. Aguirre is driven by a single, narrow goal, albeit one that defines the Western sensibility. In this sense, the historicity of the film accurately gauges sixteenth-century psychology by denying Aguirre a modernist conscience. Cinematically, Herzog depicts the attitude of the Spaniards through the naturalistic settings. In particular, he holds one shot early in the film of the raging water flowing from the mountains symbolizing the power and the turmoil within the conquistadores.

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