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|| Winter in Latin America? A
question of elevation... and metaphor. Film starts with a crew-cab pickup
running through the mountains at night... a woman driving. Uniformed cop steps
out from behind a burn barrel, hand raised but the woman just guns it, runs him
down. The man beside her is unconcerned, although he has the civilized demeanor
of a friendly professor. Dawn comes up, revealing the bleak plateau and snowy
mountains. Now they encounter a more significant check-point... and this time
they stop. The Sergeant in command notices blood on the bumper... but is
persuaded that they ran into a dog, for indeed there is a dead dog below a tarp
in the back. However, their transit papers aren't quite in order... so the
friendly Sergeant decides he'll just take the necessary photograph, frames the
friendly professor [who is passing himself off as a labourer] with a snowy peak
as a backdrop, snaps a Polaroid. It is, naturally, a significant encounter
between the hero and the villain, although neither recognizes it as such. The
phone rings, the Sergeant is distracted... the terrorists speed off.
"If you draw a map of
everywhere you've ever been, they say you eventually draw your own
face"
Cut To: 5 years later. Sergeant
Augustin Rejas is now Captain Augustin [Javier Bardin], a detective in the
capital. Why not? He's a nice guy -- a family man, a former lawyer, a man of
integrity who made a choice "to see how the other side of the law works." He
has problems -- time, money, family, bureaucracy and dangerous hombres. Like
much of Latin America, his country is teetering between totalitarianism and
revolution, the forgettable past and the uneasy present. In fact, there appears
to be an undeclared revolution underway -- dead dogs with anti-establishment
messages attached to their necks appear, hung grotesquely from lamp standards
throughout the city (one even shows up in a closet of Calderon, the Minister of
State) the advance m.o. of a shadowy terrorist known as Ezequiel... a populist
in the tradition of the Mexican revolutionary Commandante Marcos yet as
ruthless and homicidal as the Peruvian Shining Path... Ezequiel, who uses
symbolism rather than manifesto to launch his undeclared revolution.
Essentially The Dancer Upstairs
tells the story of Captain Augustin Rejas' hunt for "Ezequiel" (from the
ancient Hebrew prophet) while contrasting the virtue of pragmaticism against
the corrupted idealism of direct action. There's an intellectual mirror here,
as if the hunter hunts himself, as is often the case in contemporary crime
fiction. Symbolism is rampant. Ezequiel suffers from a skin disorder... and
Augustin falls in love with a terrorist, a dancer who is afraid of the dark.
It's a sophisticated story, with universal intent. It's the world of the
cosmopolitan Latino within a messy, post-colonial culture. The characters are
interesting, the acting excellent. The direction? As an actor, John Malkovich
established himself by choice eccentric mannerism... but as a director, he's as
subtle as sunlight on a blank page.
This is a nice film to look at,
not only for its choice of landscapes, but also for its interiors. There's a
Kafkaesque feeling about the large research room with its rows of lecturns ...
empty except for Rejas and his 3 assistants. Or the darkened theatre where the
retro troupe ['60s Grotowski improv] carry out their executions of leading
citizens selected from the audience. Here darkness becomes a metaphor that
extends into the city, which endures blackouts as part of the regime's martial
law... or the terrorist's sabotage... or simply the ineptitude of the economic
system.
Some good scenes, yes. The squad
of female terrorists dressed as naughty schoolgirls who ambush a fat lecherous
General, an assassination lifted directly from the mind of Jean-Luc Godard... a
surrealism that eventually ends as an ugly realism when Augustin tracks down a
dying assassin in the barrio, still in her erotic schoolgirl uniform, her face
a bloody mutilated mess. Sensation aside, there are also a number of excellent
conversational scenes, i.e. Augustin's first encounter with his boss, the
eccentric General Merino [Oliver Cotton], the Chief of Police, also known as
the "Fisherman" because he likes to review videos while fishing from the big
rocks above the ocean. Like Augustin, he is an authority figure with integrity,
despite the corruption and the institutional paranoia. Both men share a common
ancestry... a little bit of Indian blood which not only links them but also
places them in sympathy with the disenfranchised indigenous population who, of
course, fuel the revolution. Both Merino and Rejas are good men who want to
muddle through, uphold the law despite the local poverty or the opportunity for
an easy economic escape to Miami.
There's a lot of ambiguity in this
film -- some of it deliberate, some of it just plain old film narrative
cheating. The most interesting ambiguity is created within Augustin's
relationship with Yolanda, his daughter's ballet teacher. The ending leaves no
doubt that he's in love with her... yet whether this is the outcome of a
deliberate political seduction on his part or just the good old "two ships in
the night" fated encounter isn't clear. To some extent, Yolanda's secret
identity is absurd, and exists by omission. She's too naive and vulnerable to
be the revolutionary zealot she's revealed to be, and the fact that she never
suspects Augustin of being a cop is... well, film narrative cheating [even if
the script writer based her on a real person]. You know that Augustin's boss
instructed him to be "a tom cat", to sniff out Ezequiel by any means... and
while there's a lot of rummaging in dumpsters for evidence, Augustin does move
like a tom cat. It's a nice ambiguity, though... like two sleep-walkers
arriving at the same destination for a rendezvous with reality. The fact that
she's sentenced to a cell without light is so ironic and inferential that her
phobia becomes secondary to the bigger picture.
The key break in the case comes
from -- what else -- a video. Seems Prof. Duran a.k.a. Ezequiel liked to party
with his mistress (Dr. Edith Pusanga) and his students... and be filmed. You
might wonder if in fact he wants to be caught or if this is just the
inevitability of a determinist narrative (as all cop stories are) or a lazy
invention by the writer or, well, just a lift from real events somewhere. Or
perhaps you don't even think about it at all, just go with the romantic flow.
Well, The Dancer Upstairs is
romantic, and displays a humanity that's missing in many similar grim
socio-political tales. Ambitious, absolutely contemporary, with universal
application. Good acting, nice cine, interesting score [Alberto Iglesias, who
did Almodovar's Talk To Her]...
which includes a stirring version (despite the bungled lyrics) by Yul Anderson
of All Along the Watchtower.
*related: Javier Barden in
Before Night
Falls
© LR 9/04
Fcourt
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star. Javier Barden (Capt. Augustin Rejas) Laura Morante (Yolanda) Oliver
Cotton (Gen. Merino) Luis Miguel Cintra (Calderon) Juan Diego Botta (Sucre)
Abel Folk (Ezequiel/Prof. Duran) Elvira Minguez (Llosa) Alexandra Lencastre
(Silvina) Marie-Anne Berganza