I can't think off hand of other directors who showed so much promise yet left us so early and with such a few films to remember them by. In any case and in light of his final film, the amount of great film-making we were deprived with Fabián Bielinsky's untimely death at the age of 47 simply boggles the mind. I remember seeing years ago upon a friend's enthusiastic recommendation his previous film, NINE QUEENS, and thinking to myself how it was a darn good crime movie. But this? This plays with the greats.
I won't go into plot specifics. This is the kind of film you have to soak up with no prior knowledge. Not because plot is inconsequential to the movie, it IS after all a noir film at heart, but for the fact that putting the plot in words is bound to miss the point. I'll only post the keywords IMDb associates with it and let you fill the gaps;
Heist | Epilepsy | Neo Noir | Taxidermy | Armored Car Robbery
What Bielinsky does brilliantly, and what is indeed the mark of all great cinema, is that he writes scenes we're familiar with from prior cinematic experience, scenes that in paper might sound anticlimactic or generic, but writes them in completely different, unexpected ways. But even before the heist-goes-wrong scenario of every good heist movie comes into play in ways at once unexpected but vaguely familiar, with a palpable sense of "that's how a heist would go wrong" not with a bang but with a whimper, Bielinsky has piled the atmosphere so thick and built for himself such an engrossing movie, that the outcome of the heist is largely inconsequential.
The beauty and power of the movie rests exactly there. That it's in no rush to explain anything, that it's not anxious to impress or please yet precisely that it does. You don't meet halfways with EL AURA, you meet it on its own terms. Not as a character study of a would-be criminal (the motivation of the protagonist remains vague), but as a mood piece, a fantastical world of possibilities where the course of action seemss stunningly real.
Compared to the flashy crimedies of our days where things go wrong so characters the sum of their external quirks can spout cutesy, clever dialogue at each other, EL AURA seems of another time and place. The only other film this decade that can look it straight in the eye and be worthy of its company is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Dripping with rural atmosphere, graced with amazing camera-work and cinematography and meticulous attention to sound detail, EL AURA is nothing short of one of the greatest movies of the decade. How it didn't win major festivals is one of the great mysteries of our time. 10
I won't go into plot specifics. This is the kind of film you have to soak up with no prior knowledge. Not because plot is inconsequential to the movie, it IS after all a noir film at heart, but for the fact that putting the plot in words is bound to miss the point. I'll only post the keywords IMDb associates with it and let you fill the gaps;
Heist | Epilepsy | Neo Noir | Taxidermy | Armored Car Robbery
What Bielinsky does brilliantly, and what is indeed the mark of all great cinema, is that he writes scenes we're familiar with from prior cinematic experience, scenes that in paper might sound anticlimactic or generic, but writes them in completely different, unexpected ways. But even before the heist-goes-wrong scenario of every good heist movie comes into play in ways at once unexpected but vaguely familiar, with a palpable sense of "that's how a heist would go wrong" not with a bang but with a whimper, Bielinsky has piled the atmosphere so thick and built for himself such an engrossing movie, that the outcome of the heist is largely inconsequential.
The beauty and power of the movie rests exactly there. That it's in no rush to explain anything, that it's not anxious to impress or please yet precisely that it does. You don't meet halfways with EL AURA, you meet it on its own terms. Not as a character study of a would-be criminal (the motivation of the protagonist remains vague), but as a mood piece, a fantastical world of possibilities where the course of action seemss stunningly real.
Compared to the flashy crimedies of our days where things go wrong so characters the sum of their external quirks can spout cutesy, clever dialogue at each other, EL AURA seems of another time and place. The only other film this decade that can look it straight in the eye and be worthy of its company is NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Dripping with rural atmosphere, graced with amazing camera-work and cinematography and meticulous attention to sound detail, EL AURA is nothing short of one of the greatest movies of the decade. How it didn't win major festivals is one of the great mysteries of our time. 10