La Ciénaga - Lucrecia Martel (2001)

There are films that everyone talks about, everyone praise and nobody can really express why. This is one of those films. For the same reasons you're scared of watching them. Over ten years after it was released and unanimously acclaimed, I managed to see The Swamp.

First thing was to try and be objective and not hate it just because. And I did. I didn't adored the film, I think it was okay. I tried to understand what it meant at the time. It probably has a different rhythm and structure than most of the films at their time. It's very much a film about the North West of Argentina, rather than capital city based stories. That's the main innovation. It's about a bourgeois family, the relationships between them and with the people around them. But nothing happens. I always talk about engaging characters and empathy. These are empty characters, you just observe them, almost in a voyeuristic way. With pity or maybe despising them a little. You don't feel anything. There's no human drama.  Just everyday life. Even more boring than real life. Naturalism without emotion.

Painting a social environment that you don't normally see in films was a good achievement. But the best thing about La Ciénaga is the use of sound. Argentinian cinema doesn't have a tradition of good use of sound. Moreover, it has a "bad sound" reputation that almost turned into a cliché. Since this film I can see there have been changes and you can see sound is going somewhere and it is important now. My theory is that the most important change was done by emerging directors who were now trained at film school and were more aware that sound was also a narrative element of film (yes, films being audiovisual never gave previous directors a hint before)

What's so innovative about the sound? It also paints the picture. You don't have to make an effort to listen to what the actors are saying. You can feel the atmosphere through sound too (a film like this without the sounds of an approaching storm or the strong presence of nature wouldn't be right). The awkwardness of situations is even more awkward because of the way sound is used. Nothing outstanding or significantly more expensive, just a little bit of extra work and respect for the sound department. At the time this was a huge improvement.

La ciénaga