Reviews

There is such a lack of new information on this show compared to other documentaries on nature and science that it could be easily used as a teaching tool for children. Context on cultural background of non-industrialized peoples seen on all episodes is nonexistent. Any magazine issue would have more substance. Lack of environmental awareness is deeply disturbing. Who's funding them?

Despite an auspicious beginning and an interesting and promising development on the characters involved on the dictionary project at the end of the nineteenth century, which seems to be the central theme, the plot meanders tediously through the narratives of (implausible) love, religious redemption and the vagaries of mental illness and academic institutions without the viewer not knowing too well where it is all going. Tedious: too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous. Favourite synonyms: dreary, soporific, plodding, lacklustre.

There are a myriad ways any art form may approach a given topic, like the impact of violence to humans and societies, and go from the local to the universal. This movie succeeds even if not perhaps brilliantly. I wonder, how many movies we've seen on the Vietnam, the II WW or the Gulf War from the perspective of US? And yet, a new one may draw our interest because it will depend on its angle and approach and the narrative or symbolic means to convey fear, horror, pain, humiliation, shame, rage, despair, etc. Sometimes I've heard young people from Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain complain about the amount of films or novels on themes of our traumatic recent pasts. For me, instead, any new film on the Spanish Civil War or the dictatorship is welcome, though there is such a thing as the impact of collective conciousness, so it will and can never be the same. I cannot keep an emotional distance. I remember now having watched Hanna Arendt a year ago and being also impacted on the new concept of the banalization of evil and the old concept of collaboration to save your own skin. Again, probably not a great movie from a critic's perspective. I have seen this story on Lithuania's past under Soviet oppression with great interest. I have only seen a Estonian one so far, and I have Ikitie on my waiting list. I have also seen several films on Eastern Germany. All I can say is, more. I want to know more. Traumatic histories deserve to be told and no film critic should belittle them under the appearance of objectivity.

Rodriguez's movie set in the Guadalquivir marshland and rural Sevilla when Spain's democracy was at its infancy is poetic and artistic, yet if flows fluidly. Its 10 awards -including Best Photography- at the Goya 2015 edition are well deserved, and it establishes Alberto Rodríguez as a director to look out for. Gutierrez's (Juan) and Arevalo's (Pedro) interpretations are powerful and convincing. Juan is an ambiguous and complex character, though I found certain aspects of his personality and biography (or rather, their combination) a bit artificial. The gist of the plot reminded me of a famous crime which took place in a Valencia village in the early 90s, but I doubt that was Rodriguez's and Cobo's intention. Apparently they wrote the script some 10 years ago, but only recently they thought of setting the action in the early 80s (from what I gathered, before the attempted coup and the socialists' victory). Although I would have preferred the end to shed a bit more light on a couple of things, this thriller is gripping, well-structured, well-interpreted (kudos also to Nerea Barros) and entertaining throughout. Excellent music and photography, too.