Honor de Cavalleria
Albert Serra
2008 Appeared in the journal Sequences
Lost in La Mancha digital
Rarely have we seen work also stripped and consistent. Honor de Cavalleria , the first feature of radical Spain's Albert Serra, deconstructs "Don Quixote", the founding work of Western modernity, to its substantial pith. If the Emperor of junk has never seemed so bare, this experimental film manages to touch the essence of the text of Cervantes with incredible rapture.
Armed with a digital camera and an army of half a dozen brave fighters of auteur cinema, Serra sinks with Quixote and Sancho Panza in the Catalan lowlands, forming a small battalion of party unknown the forehead to the conquest of divine purity. On more than one respect, Honor de Cavalleria looks just like the chimerical odyssey of Don Quixote and his faithful Sancho, windmills and less.
Shot entirely outdoors without resorted to any decor, the film advance roundabouts, preferring arcs with straight lines, will allow all the freedoms against 1100 immortal pages of Cervantes. By refusing to spatialization, first: we enter the film facing the two knights already prey to their fantasies, on the lookout for a divine sign. Slowly the night falls, and our wealth bigots always restless, despite the inaction of their situation. Never mind, we will take all day, even though the light blur as their route. Serra
a clean slate and a clean sweep of all previous versions of this monument to both arch-known and rarely visited, playing on this closeness and ignorance, it ends on a proposal to be naturalistic, where the civilized man is one with his mount and his faith, as in the time of the Crusades . Curious impression that to observe a filmmaker and his camera flush fields spy turn characters pending an appeal invisible ... Although the nerve is the first mark, the filmmaker demonstrates first and foremost a talent obvious to capture silence as if they were tirades, transform the ubiquitous breath of the north wind (the wind of Northern Catalonia) in rumble of an army on the heels of his two peashooter, if not to embrace a narrative history shot with a mini-DV with the eloquence of a David Lean. Once skimmed
tags borrowed here and there Rossellini, Ozu, Pasolini, Bresson Sokurov, one quickly realizes that the path cleared by the filmmaker is a virtuoso sinuosity, guided by a vision of Reform: the wandering here becomes an art, that of all things to work around and face the truth as late as possible, that of nothingness, but is this really what this is? For if the earthy Sancho is tracking Quixote dreaming, for some, you'd see the man lost in the footsteps of God. Again, the film is skillfully between episodes reported by Cervantes, and the evocation of these, which are both interpretation, adaptation and change the original text. Taking
to cons-foot movie costumes respectful to the verb, the filmmaker opted for Catalan, native language, and non-professional actors - Lluis Carbo, who plays Don Quixote, is a tennis coach to retire (! ) - precisely drafted to embody what is truly Panza and Quixote robbed of their appearance symbolic, that is to say a simple-minded drinking tirades of an old illuminated. Outside the philosophy, hello 'Geriatric siblings', as if this observation accuracy was not sufficient for us to embark on this adventure Threepenny Honor de Cavalleria truly marked points in the affection is are the two characters to each other, fed each other from their own naivete. This is one of the few carrots we tend Serra drama during which these parentheses is taken up through this non-narrative, moved against the tenderness of a shared bath in a river or climb a slope together.
If would have been easy to turn these knights straw Laurel and Hardy Catalan, Serra forbidden intrusion psychologizing, even if only to enhance an unusual friendship. Although he leaves the plan, the last act, in which the faith of the duo is tested by the response - perfect or not - real knights and the possibility of separation, more brand implosion the companionship of a Quadrature of an epic, even if it only exists in the minds of completely escape characters and the audience throughout the projection.
© 2008 Charles-Stéphane Roy
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