I was shown the first segment of this film in a lecture on Latin American Cinema, and afterwards I was given the accompanying political manifesto in which Solanas reiterates his revolutionary philosophy. Whatever you make of the politics, it is admirable how he has so artfully expressed the same anti-imperialist messages in the very different mediums of cinema and literature. The economic and cultural colonization to which the West has subjected Argentina, and the craven cooperation of a mindlessly Europeanized elite are both harped upon; first with the skillful editing of interviews and documentary footage, and then simply with expertly chosen words. In both cases the goal was to ferret out the ultimate causes, rather than merely bemoan the effects -- namely chronic underdevelopment and immense poverty and human misery.
This relatively cold description misses the point, however. The real strength of the first segment of this film is its unbelievable emotional power. It is a fire and brimstone tirade against the state of Argentina, with the explicit goal of stirring up revolutionary aggression against those whom Solanas and his cadre deem most immediately responsible. Everything is either extremely kinetic editing, emotionally charged narration, or carefully selected cinema verite footage of police and military brutality, urban and rural poverty, or the plight of indigenous peoples -- all accompanied by explanatory titles cards which literally surge forward at the viewer. The movie is a virtuoso experience of emotional manipulation at its most sophisticated, going so far as to climax with a rapid montage of shots of youth mindlessly milling around record stores edited to the sound of machine gun fire.
Inevitably, reality soon sets back in. One hesitates to apply words like "one-sided" or "biased" to a film like this. This is no Michael Moore spiel, or one of the numerous liberal exposes that criticize American culture from within -- it is nothing less than a late 60s revolutionary call to arms; a militant document aimed at combating the repression of a very real authoritarianism. As such, it's more fruitful to critique the direction it wishes to lead than the relative truth of the world-view it puts forth. For this, one can find no better crystallization than the film's coda. This is simply a minute-long close-up of the lifeless face Che Guevara -- Argentina's ultimate revolutionary gazing at us from beyond the grave, perhaps inviting others to follow his example. This is not a blind fetishization of him on the basis of Alberto Korda's great photograph, but a valorization of his revolutionary Stalinism, which Solanas's manifesto agrees with in labeling "Peace" and "Democracy" reformist cop-outs on true social justice. This sort of thing is the real stumbling block to viewing the film today, when the ferment of the 60s is past and the new face of Argentinian cinema is the likes of Nine Queens. Today, for all but fanatics, the film is merely a fascinating socio-historical document.
This relatively cold description misses the point, however. The real strength of the first segment of this film is its unbelievable emotional power. It is a fire and brimstone tirade against the state of Argentina, with the explicit goal of stirring up revolutionary aggression against those whom Solanas and his cadre deem most immediately responsible. Everything is either extremely kinetic editing, emotionally charged narration, or carefully selected cinema verite footage of police and military brutality, urban and rural poverty, or the plight of indigenous peoples -- all accompanied by explanatory titles cards which literally surge forward at the viewer. The movie is a virtuoso experience of emotional manipulation at its most sophisticated, going so far as to climax with a rapid montage of shots of youth mindlessly milling around record stores edited to the sound of machine gun fire.
Inevitably, reality soon sets back in. One hesitates to apply words like "one-sided" or "biased" to a film like this. This is no Michael Moore spiel, or one of the numerous liberal exposes that criticize American culture from within -- it is nothing less than a late 60s revolutionary call to arms; a militant document aimed at combating the repression of a very real authoritarianism. As such, it's more fruitful to critique the direction it wishes to lead than the relative truth of the world-view it puts forth. For this, one can find no better crystallization than the film's coda. This is simply a minute-long close-up of the lifeless face Che Guevara -- Argentina's ultimate revolutionary gazing at us from beyond the grave, perhaps inviting others to follow his example. This is not a blind fetishization of him on the basis of Alberto Korda's great photograph, but a valorization of his revolutionary Stalinism, which Solanas's manifesto agrees with in labeling "Peace" and "Democracy" reformist cop-outs on true social justice. This sort of thing is the real stumbling block to viewing the film today, when the ferment of the 60s is past and the new face of Argentinian cinema is the likes of Nine Queens. Today, for all but fanatics, the film is merely a fascinating socio-historical document.