Third World poverty is a subject the
cinema seems unwilling to tackle, perhaps understandably so since the
movies are fundamentally a commercial enterprise and 'entertainment' is
the name of the game. When 'western' cinema tackles the subject, (and I
am thinking here of Hollywood cinema), it tends to romanticise it or
make it the subject of a thriller so it's often left to 'native' cinema
to deal with their own issues and a lot of the time, when they do, the
subject is turned around and treated as an 'action' flic or simply
ignored altogether. "La Soledad" is mercifully, and thankfully,
the exception.
Jorge Thielen Armand's film hails from Venezuela
where poverty and crime are debilitating issues. In a society ruled by
violence Negro and his family have virtually nothing, living on the edge
and with the likelihood of being thrown out of the crumbling mansion
where they are virtual squatters. There is no melodrama in the telling
of their tale and little drama either. Armand simply observes his
characters as they struggle from one day to the next. This could be a
documentary and his cast, all playing themselves, respond with
extraordinarily naturalistic 'performances'. The tragedy lies in our
knowledge that for many people in Venezuela life is unlikely to get any
better than it is shown here. 'Action', for want of a better word, when
it happens does so off-screen and yet, never for a moment, could you
describe this film as boring; the potential for violence never actually
seen is never far from the surface. Let's hope this extraordinary film
finds the audience it deserves.
Jorge Thielen Armand's film hails from Venezuela
where poverty and crime are debilitating issues. In a society ruled by
violence Negro and his family have virtually nothing, living on the edge
and with the likelihood of being thrown out of the crumbling mansion
where they are virtual squatters. There is no melodrama in the telling
of their tale and little drama either. Armand simply observes his
characters as they struggle from one day to the next. This could be a
documentary and his cast, all playing themselves, respond with
extraordinarily naturalistic 'performances'. The tragedy lies in our
knowledge that for many people in Venezuela life is unlikely to get any
better than it is shown here. 'Action', for want of a better word, when
it happens does so off-screen and yet, never for a moment, could you
describe this film as boring; the potential for violence never actually
seen is never far from the surface. Let's hope this extraordinary film
finds the audience it deserves.
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