User Reviews

Mexican film-maker Carlos Reygadas returns with his most ambitious film yet with 'Post Tenebras Lux', in the most part using a self-made beer-glass camera lens which refracts his figures, doubles the image and leaves the screen's borders blurred.

The opening sequence sums up the dreamlike drama of this film, where a young child is surrounded by a pack of dogs and horses from daylight to darkness. Your mind starts to panic as you assume the worst will happen, questions go through your mind about the wellbeing of the child. Its an unnerving scene. Things get stranger still, with a series of seemingly unconnected stories; where English children play rugby in a school; a red Lucifer/goat-like figure making housecalls with a toolbox; and a bathhouse where orgies take place in rooms named after Hegel and Duchamp. Inbetween the many short stories, a couple called Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) and Natalia (Nathalia Acevedo) live in a big house with their children in the mountains somewhere in Mexico. Their lives and the people that work for them are the only concentrated narrative strands running through this film.

These disparate short stories seem to be used to map out the different aspects of Reygadas's home country. The rugby match is the one scene that doesn't fit into this film, I assume its used as a unifying concept for Mexico's people who shouldn't be fighting amongst themselves but working as a team for the greater good, regardless of their backgrounds and beliefs.

'Post Tenebras Lux' is a sketchy film that flits between the real and unreal. By taking so many different snapshots of life, the message is often lost. These broad brushstrokes are occasionally impressive in situations you least expect, such as in the forest and the headless man. Beautifully filmed, Reygadas's vision and imagination unlocks images you may not have seen otherwise, or unsuspecting thoughts and feelings. There's a lot to ponder in 'Post Tenebras Lux' but a lot that you may cast aside just as quickly, what's left may be all you need from this film.

Contains Spoilers!

Many people found this film to be confusing, lacking a plot, art- house nonsense. Perhaps they were right and perhaps I'm just an art nut but I was all but awestruck by the piece. In Post Tenebras Lux, (Light After Darkness in Latin) Carlos Reygadas gives a beautiful and insightful look into the lives of a family living in rural Mexico. It may seem confusing and heady at first but to me, that is an over- complication. What I got out of this film was a simple and unique portrayal of the ordinary and mundane which can even sometimes seem shocking to us because realism is not a frequently employed style in film. Another thing, is although it may appear to be meandering and slow at times, (and perhaps ultimately is) the long scenes of a family just waking up, a reunion, an argument in the kitchen, a conversation at a bar- they all give us a deep and insightful look at the members of this family so that we can really connect to them on an emotional level which is something every film must do so as not to simply be a bunch of images flashing across the screen, and this one does so very well. Although it is ultimately realist it employs many techniques of impressionism (the 'looking through glass' effects) and even surrealism (a man ripping off his own head, the devil walking through the house). I really enjoyed this tender look into the lives of one family and look forward to watching more of Reygadas' work.

Reygadas new film takes a very personal perspective on the preoccupations that have been haunting him in his earlier movies. If I try to put them in phrases: How can one live with the contradictions of life without destroying yourself and others? How are we close to others, the ones that are less privileged,our partners, our children? The answer given by this tenebrous movie is not encouraging considering the fate of the main character. In the first scene a little girl (Reygadas daughter) plays on a wet field where cows, horses and dogs are romping. In the background we can hear thunder and it is getting dark. It is a threatening atmosphere but also a very lively one. The child is full of joy but at the same time the atmosphere is somber. Maybe the author is saying: The life of my child starts in a mysterious and majestic nature. Where will it lead and what is my part in it? Many scenes do not fit in a sequence, but this gives a dreamlike undertone to the movie which is underlined by the distortion to the edge of the image which is annoying at the beginning but fits very well to the overall atmosphere. A devilish and unhurried image appears in the next scene and made me think: The devil is at work and it takes its time. As a child one observes impartially what happens in the adult world. The devil disappears into the chamber of the sleeping parents closing the door to the childish curiosity and getting to work on the sleeping couple with his toolbox. Juan the father and main character is worried about his surroundings and himself and he experiments approaching the inhabitants of the little town where he lives in a stately house. He attends the AA meetings where he also meets seven his handyman at home who will later rob his house and put an end to his life. Nature is impressive but full of violence. Trees are cut in retaliation for family feuds. Dogs that accompany our lives are at the same time violently mistreated. The relation to his wife Natalia is marked with contradiction, by tenderness, violence and distance. He tries to stimulate desire in both with strong erotic but personal words. She plays Neil Youngs "Its a dream" while he dies after saying a few poetic last words. Life is an intense dream for Reygadas and he shares his dreams with very impressive and poetic language.

And the peasantry seem no better in this hopelessly art school amateur mess of a film ... In fact it looks like it is just some scenes that were shoved in for god knows what reason to pad out the brief but mediocre narrative ... No there is NOTHING clever going on here ... The film reeks of arrogance and comes across as something that was made by some awful rich kid with too much confidence and not nearly enough talent To be honest it is a film you really have to see ( once ) just to understand how money has completely destroyed art ... Bright glowing BULLdemons... HIDEOUS spoiled brat children ... WTF British public school rugby practice ( give me a break you brat ) Even such an obvious brat director completely fails to mar the beauty of the country itself though ... Mexico has such a rich cinema history and I bet there's many ex directors screaming "GORD HELP US" in their graves after this silly little thing came out DRIVEL ... With a capital D ( obviously )

Life is cyclical, filled with both blatant and subtle cycles that become manifest as we choose to see them. There are simple ones, simple in that even a young child has a grasp on it: day and night, sleeping and waking, one behavior being rewarded, a different one is punished, strategies for getting around it, others that never work, etc. As we grow older, the more intricate ones appear, like bars of a cage that had not been visible while you were too busy thinking about other things. Then something strange happens apart from the natural cycles of life. We start to create, fabricate, cycles within our lives, sometimes strengthening the bars that hold us to the natural laws of this world, then shrinking the cage to a point where we are also bound to cycles that are only self-destructive.

In Carlos Reygadas' Post Tenebras Lux, I saw a beautiful, powerful exploration of the side of cycles that is usually in the dark, the downturn. The point briefly after the fact, when the party is over, and you're looking around the room at the empty beer bottles and stains on the carpet, nearly everyone has left and there is nowhere for the mind to go except the next day, breaking subtly through the window. You wince at the thought of going to work, or running an errand, things that didn't exist eight hours before. A palpable heaviness is in the air as life empties itself, waiting patiently and uncaringly for your to start filling it again. Aside from this theme, the images themselves were incredibly nostalgic and original, I was hooked from the strange beginning scene.

A little girl is roaming around a field in the sunshine, cows and dogs run all over the place around her. She is laughing and giggling, smiling. But we overstay our welcome as eventually the sun goes down, but we are still with her, in the field, in the darkness. She's not laughing anymore. Someone made a mistake. The scenes of dusk behind various environmental backgrounds is insanely beautiful, and the distorted edges of the film throughout give it an added dimension of dreaminess, as we are taken freely back and forth through time.

The wealthy couple, Natalie (Nathalia Acevedo) and Juan (Adolfo Jimenez Castro), are developed and revealed to us through various scenes, attempts at breaking the ritual cycle, with which they've grown bored. These range from parties to sex, but none of it hides the problems that cause them to fight, the same ones over and over gain. the overwhelming beauty that surrounds them doesn't seem to mean anything anymore, while the viewer is given gifts of extended shots on such beauty.

Another character the film follows is that of "El Siete," a nickname we learn as we are inside an AAA meeting in which members divulge their vices and struggles in trust. El Siete has had many things go wrong in his past, alcohol, drugs, stealing. These men seem to be making an honest attempt at breaking the self-destructive cycles in their lives. Juan comes along with El Siete, but feels that his problem, addiction to online pornography, is minor compared to everyone else's. The hope of these men's redemption is tragically shattered when El Siete ends up shooting Juan as he tries to get away with some stolen goods from Juan's house when it is left untended by another friend, El Jarro--he seems to be unable to escape what many might call an "evil" nature. Is this the meaning of the thin red glowing devil that walks through the house, one at the beginning of the film and once again near the end? Is evil predetermined, a will owned like property by this evil presence? I'm not sure, it is still open to me, but what a cool effect to watch.

Juan quotes Tolstoy's War and Peace in a scene where everyone is arguing the best Russian writers: "Pierre felt for the first time, that strange, yet pleasant feeling as he suddenly understood that wealth, power, life… everything that men fight for and defend so eagerly, are worth no more than the pleasure one feels when they abandon you." There is certainly a pervasive sense of all comes to nothing in the end throughout the film, but it is the quiet, contemplative beauty that the film accentuates which acts as an arbiter of each cycle's birth, reminding us to forget worrying about it.

All I have to say is I'm glad I didn't have to pay to watch this no plot of a so called movie.

I wouldn't actually call it a movie. A movie has a plot and acting. I definitely don't like watching animals getting abused. What a mess of a mismatch movie.

Watched this film time ago, and at the time like everyone else got confounded with the mish mash of imagery and bare bones plot. However a recent viewing revealed some clear connections between the scenes and images in the film, bear with me, this isn´t a full fledged analysis but more of a series of observations. First this is a deeply mexican film, it touches on some ideas that have been long discussed regarding Mexico´s status as a developing country and the mentality and behaviour of its people in comparison with first world people/countries, hence the aparently disconnected rugby game and sauna sequences. -The first scene with the little girl is more of a pure image rather than a idea: if you know Mexico you might notice that the warm and tender are right next to the raw and savage. -The devil in the house is obviously an alusion to the personal demons of the characters, right next to this scene we see Juan brutally beating his dog, and going to a help group to confess his porn addiction, there he mets "Siete" (Seven) an all around despicable individual on his supposed path to righting his life. And from there we see the the warm-up to a rugby match in an English school, that is a group of kids in a first world institution are learning to channel and shape their aggression. -The sauna sequence could very well be located in other place than Mexico, in it, we see a sort of orgy, that is, sexuality here is organized and ritualized. Compare with Juan and "Siete" ´s afflictions. Appropiately most of this happens in the countryside, nature untamed and all that. These are some of the things that made me see the movie in a much more connected and coherent manner, the obvious signal with these movies is to see if the images and sequences we are seeing resonate and rebound between them and why and how, and that may be part of the Reygadas plan.

The 1st time I viewed PTL, was during the film's PREMIERE in the 2012 SITGES FILM FESTIVAL: it did hold up, but it does not in a small screen (of say, a Library TV set). Regardless PTL is a visually stunning film, the violence towards 3 dogs, is very uncomfortable to presence: perhaps is Reygadas' method to invite the audience to reflect, why violence towards animals is way more unacceptable than violence towards a human, or later on, towards trees.

If I'm wrong, is Reygadas mix like this for you to feel satisfied when, Spoiler Alert, the rich kid that attacked Dog 1, gets shot? The problem is that, personally I could not care more for the human characters than for the animal characters: because the good guy is meh, and the bad guy is meh. Sure, the documentary feeling that non-Actors provide, could be the reason. Only 2 songs are the soundtrack, by Neil Young and Luis Miguel: both played live, doomed to not excel, just like the non Actors unperform. Do stay for the last dialogue, its double entendre is the Film's best contribution.