Dir: Esteban
Sapir, Argentina, 2007, 90 mins, subtitles
Cast: Valeria Bertuccelli, Alejandro Urdapilleta, Julieta
Cardinali
Review by Dave Hall This is a gorgeous-looking art house movie, shot in black
and white, and mostly silent, or at least mostly dialogue-free.
It's a political allegory which draws on expressionism,
surrealism and Fritz Lang-era science fiction to portray
the attempted overthrow of a malevolent media mogul called
Mr TV. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's financed by the director's
own production company; it's mind-boggling trying to imagine
director Sapir pitching this one to Argentinian studio
executives.
There's no shortage of ambition, then, and as a former cinematographer
Sapir knows how to spin mesmerising, gorgeous images. His
use of silent film techniques is affectionate and inventive,
too: back projection, animation and montage are delivered
with tongue-in-cheek eccentricity; subtitles interact with
characters, and in one visionary scene words rise from the
comatose population, and float upwards like snow through
city skyscrapers. Sadly, it's the emotional life of the film
that stays resolutely two-dimensional, a bit like the pop-up
book that opens and closes this artfully told story.
As the book opens, we learn that Mr
TV has stolen the voices of an entire city – or at
least of those exposed to the sinister hypnotist's swirl
that adorns all his products. Enforcing his oppressive
regime are a rubber gloved scientist with a taste for torture,
and a grotesque, dentally challenged rat-cum-chauffeur.
Pitted against him are a TV repairman, his blowzy wife,
their young daughter, plus an eyeless boy from across the
art deco street who, startlingly, can still speak. This
slightly cracked family unit are fighting for freedom and
individual expression, and have to reboot a long-defunct
antenna to do it.
The political overtones are clear,
but for all the Nazi and Communist iconography, the state
is nowhere to be seen; this is very much a private sector
dictatorship, one where the people unquestioningly consume
the bland, homogenised fare served up by Mr TV. If these
potentially potent themes don't really hit home, it's simply
because Sapir is more interested in the wondrous than the
worldly, as nods in the direction of Metropolis (1927),
expressionist directors like Karl Freund, and even George
Méliès' Trip to
the Moon (1902) illustrate.
There's plenty to please the ear, too; a vibrant, layered
soundtrack mingles Leo Sujatovic's modern tango music with
foley effects ranging from gunshots and car horns to, in
quieter moments, the sound of a whirring film reel. It's
all very beguiling in a hermetically sealed way, but despite
its dreamy images, La Antena doesn't conjure a mood or rummage
around in the subconscious, and what seems like thematic
boldness proves largely illusory too.
In the end, watching La Antena is like seeing a dystopian-themed
snow globe come to life; it's cleverly done, good to look
at and often magical, but you're always on the outside looking
in. That said, there's nothing else out there quite like
it.
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