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Above all, bodies and races:
when I try to understand why this film has been
so violently rejected, those are the first words
that come to mind. To begin a film with a fellatio
scene is nothing. That's been a permissible audacity
for a long time. But if the guy is obese and half-caste,
and the girl beautiful and white, well, that's a
scandal: not that cock in that
mouth! Anything but naive, Carlos Reygadas obviously
knew exactly what he was doing, and the violent
reaction of a portion of the critics at Cannes gave
the measure of the provocation. In Battle in
Heaven, it's this double linkage of ugliness/beauty
and poverty/wealth that provokes the critical avalanche.
Marcos is only a servant, the chauffeur employed
by the parents of Ana, the young girl who tenderly
sucks him off. To depict the poor fucking each other
(Marcos and his even more obese wife) is acceptable,
but miscegenation isn't. Reygadas knows it, so he
decides to have fun and to push things as far as
possible. But this provocation is far from gratuitous,
and the mystery of Ana and Marcos's relationship
lies at the heart of the film. "We still want to
know why this pretty, young rich girl wants to suck
off this fat, filthy guy!" one viewer—my mother
no less—told me, particularly exasperated with the
movie. And hereís the real scandal: the two have
known each other forever! Marcos is Ana's oldest
friend. He has been her driver since she was little,
formerly taking her to school, now to the airport.
She has confided her secrets to him, told him all
the bad things about her parentsóheís a regular
living diary, this Marcos. How long has he been
in love with Ana? And for how long has he been the
most stable element in Anaís life, the rich kid
whoís so bored that she prostitutes herself to pass
the time? I figured all this out myself, on the
basis of several scraps of information. Reygadas
doesnít try for a standard psychological portrait
with the obligatory childhood memories and well-established
sentimental relations, and he leaves it to the audience
to fill in the blanks and imagine this curious love
for themselves.
As a result, each sequence in Battle in Heaven
becomes a unit that has to be decrypted and rearranged.
No psychology here, just a comment on the state
of a society with its superstructures (army, religion,
police, football as a mass spectacle), its horrors
that have become banal (the kidnapping of children),
and a class divide that continues to deepen. Love
is also subject to the relations of production.
And this is an old story, not good to recall in
this era of ebbing hope.
But what's most unforgivable to Battle in Heaven's
detractors is the lyricism that is set free in the
film. If Reygadas were a true young Marxist, heíd
be given a lot more leeway. After all, he comes
from a poor and oppressed country with a moribund
film industry that once was glorious. And don't
forget, Straub is also a lyrical Marxist. But he
works with a noble high culture and makes it his
primary material. In his films the bodies of the
poor are always glorious; they stand firmly on their
feet, endowed with powerful words. Whereas Reygadas
makes a bit too much of it and can never resist
going for an effect. He exercises a consciously
popular lyricism, ultimately closer to Leone than
Tarkovsky. The resulting beauty approaches bad taste
and could easily be qualified as "the splendor of
the mall." As with all seducers, and as Jean Renoir
used to emphasize, it wouldn't take much for him
to become odious. But how can you resist a filmmaker
who uses an old Spanish saeta as if it was an unpublished
Ennio Morricone theme? Is real beauty ever pure?
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