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Becomes Reality
An Interview with Carlos Reygadas
by Robert Koehler
ne of the unexpected results of the CGI revolution in cinema Contrary to what some of his critics say about him, Reygadas is per-
O digital effects, and one of the least noticed, is how the tools havefectly at ease discussing the meanings and ideas behind his films. That
allowed filmmakers with personal, independent voices to create he has been depicted as otherwise is only one of a number offalse obfiis-
images and sequences that they may have previously envisioned but cations, which have been thrown in his way by critics and others either
couldn't have managed to actually make. Near the end of Still Life bamboozled, repelled, or confused by his work, and the new film's
(2006), Jia Zhangke crafts a stunning shot in which a ship incongruous- refusal to lay out a clear, driving narrative line perhaps only com-
ly lifts off from the Yangtze River valley floor, scrambling the viewer's pounds the syndrome. But no one bothering to pay attention to his
sense ofpresent and future, to say nothing of the impossible. Throughout untamed and ribald contribution to the 2011 omnibus film Revolu-
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Apichatpong ción, titled Este es mi Reino—in which a backyard party turns into a
Weerasethakul creates a gaggle of startling, haunting, and amusingly Walpurgisnacht to end a/i Walpurgisnachts—could have doubted that
fantastic images, from the now-iconic red-eyed monkey men who revisit he was moving on to wilder and woolier stuft from the Dreyeresque
their living relatives from the dead, to a princess's lovemaking with a placidity and spirituality o/Silent Light. Filmed in the house he built
fish, to an apartment with doppelgängers. Word has it that Lisandro after completing Silent Light, PTL (the second consecutive feature with
Alonso may have some (possibly digital) images made for his upcoming, the word "light" in the title) traces the downhill course of architect Juan
still-untitled film starring Viggo Mortensen set in the Argentine desert in (Adolfo Jiménez Castro), raising two lively children (Reygadas's own
the 1860s. kids Rut and Eleazar) with
In Post Tenebras Lux, his disconsolate wife
(translated from Latin as In his return to feature filmmaking with Post Natalia (Nathalia Aceve-
"After Darkness Light"), Car- Tenebras Lux, the director of Battle in Heaven do). Juan's and Natalia's
los Reygadas has expanded sexual problems have seem-
his range of stylistic and the-
and Silent Light adwances his aesthetic, ingly compounded his self-
matic concerns but, along mingling dreams, fantasy, and reality. confessed addiction to porn,
with this, he has deployed as well as inspired half-
digital tools for scenes that explode the veneer of conventional realism crazed "therapeutic" ventures such as one the couple takes to France for
and startled audiences who viewed the film in its premiere in Cannes group sex in steam baths named for philosophers such as Hegel. Worse,
last year, when Reygadas survived a volley of sharply negative reviews Juan abuses his dogs and habitually talks to his working-class neighbors
to win the Best Director prize. Early in the film, in a seemingly real and workers either dismissively or imperiously. In an elaborately staged
country home, a blazing red-hoofed demon strides in and surveys the party sequence with his extended family, Juan is very much the out-
abode. Near the end, a man despairing over the violence and havoc he's sider, prompted to insult his family by quoting a citation from War and
caused self-decapitates himself—literally ripping his own head off Peace with smart-alecky aplomb.
Throughout Reygadas's filmography, starting with the shorts he made As Reygadas observes in the interview, Juan is a product of an upper-
in Belgium after turning his back on a promising career as an attorney class. Westernized Mexican system, a man bound up in alienation, cut
specializing in international law, a detectable tension between a harshly oft from his own feelings. He's unable to do precisely what one of his
composed realism and a cosmic transcendentalism is constantly at play. children does during the astonishing opening minutes: dreaming of gal-
The apparent resurrection of the dead wife in Silent Light (2007) livanting in the fields with dogs, cows, and horses, utterly free and
occurs at the end of a tale firmly grounded in the everyday world of a amazed, with eyes wide open at the beasts below and the approaching
Mennonite farming community in Mexico. The Post Tenebras Lux storms clouds above. It happens to be the children who witness the red
demon may be fantastical, but he's carrying the actual toolbox that demon—a moment Reygadas handles without any of the tendentious
Reygadas's father has carried for years. sentimentalism that such a scene would be staged by Spielberg—implic-
The new cinema tools of the twenty-first century developed by and itly conspiring an alliance early on between the kids and the viewer.
for corporate-sponsored factory filmmakers, have allowed film artists to Though some may doubt it, Reygadas insists that his least favorite
bridge the Cinema of the Possible and the Cinema of the Impossible, movie genre is fantasy, and he buttresses this stance by refusing to demar-
and Reygadas is a prime example of expanding on these new visual pos- cate the possible from the impossible in PTL. Fantasy insists on such
sibilities. The tools are, in fact, not important in themselves, and the demarcation, positing at its most extreme that the impossible world is far
only device brought up in the following two-part interview (the first preferable to the real one left behind. The realities of the imagined, the
part conducted in Cannes in May 2012, the second part conducted on dreamt, and the conjured, the harshness of nightmares generated by actu-
Skype between Los Angeles and Reygadas's home in the state of Guer- al fears, underlie every moment in PTL, even when the action may play
rero eleven months later) was a specially crafted, refracted lens used byout in the mundane atmosphere of the kitchen after a family dinner. Some
the director and his cinematographer Alexis Zabe during the film's of the most interesting artists in the current cinema dismiss any separation
exterior scenes. Rather, it's what the tools permit, and what the permis- between the world as seen with our eyes and a world beyond human
sion tells us about what Reygadas and other filmmakers like him—as vision. So, in Ulrich Kohler's Sleeping Sickness (2011), an alienated
disparate as they are from each other, Reygadas, }ia, Weerasethakul, French physician in Africa and a close cousin to Reygadas's Juan, trans-
and Alonso have dominated and in many ways have defined the past forms into a hippo. Impossible, but ask any red demon taking a break
decade's radical narrative cinema—are moving toward. from work, and he'll probably tell you that it's also true.—Robert Koehler
Cinéaste: Do you consider yourself a radical filmmaker? Reygadas: Not so much that as I think I'm refiecting reality. Have
Carlos Reygadas: I had never thought of myself of being more rad- you walked through London on a Saturday night? It can be danger-
ical or less radical. However, I think of myself as changing. Hopeful- ous. Men aren't only violent, but we are violent. Men also laugh,
ly making natural, organic changes. I'm thinking of two films I want they enjoy life, but they can also get drunk and completely wild. You
to make, one is historical, which I've been thinking about and writ- rarely see sadism in my films, and my characters seldom get really
ing. Another is about people who I know. I've been thinking, violent. They can get obnoxious, or out of hand. But I don't have a
though, that it would be boring or absurd to make a historical film. case against men. I think we're the same, in most ways. And while
Then I felt that making this other film, without any limits and being we're talking about it, I don't have any overall vision of women.
close to the individuals, to capture a reality of the thing and people, Really, what you see in all of my films is how I feel in general about
would be more meaningful. This is what I want to do in cinema men and women.
more and more. I feel this need to do it. To capture beats of life, Cinéaste: You designed all the elements related to the film, such as the
whether it's situations or Individuals. I want to make those connec- posters and the press book. You're in control of every aspect of the film,
tions. I don't want to have huge success or make big films. from distribution through sales.
Cinéaste: Eor all of that, though. Post Tenebras Lux is a film that Reygadas: That's true, it's a consistency, which is why I like to keep
appears to straddle what could be termed the Cinema of the Possible on the group who worked with me on the film through every aspect
and the Cinema of the Impossible. This may be one of the most exciting of the production. So my assistant director is my press director dur-
developments in the art form recently, and the film is a potent example ing Cannes. Totally different jobs.
of it. And this leads to a discussion about meanings. Cinéaste: What's behind that? Other filmmakers might want to have
Reygadas: The film is about many things, including the perception that kind of control, but few are able to do that at this level.
of reality, of our dreams, fantasies, and in our direct experiences, Reygadas: I worked hard for it. This total independence takes you
and in the acknowledgment of the reality beyond what we see and to a place where frustration is diminished. I'm very happy to work
hear. You and I know that there's a reality in places we haven't pos- this way. Everything has a nuance of expression, so if you use a
sibly visited or experienced firsthand—say, the Congo, or Central comma in the title, you choose a particular color for the poster, or
China. As for the feelings people have from their experiences, and you think of a design for the press book, everything has to be con-
¡what these may trigger in our dreams, or subconscious, these are felt nected. I don't think of the poster as a commercial operation while
more or less powerfully. And if we didn't feel them we wouldn't be the film is artistic. Instead, every aspect is creative and about the
alive. The rugby sequences are part of that. It could be happening in overall expression. The whole thing is clearly connected.
the film's present at another place on earth, or as an episode in Cinéaste: To get into it one step further, the weirdly cursive typeface in
Juan's younger life. The film is also about patriarchy, some of which the graphic system of the film's published materials is extremely unusu-
comes from the U.K., generated through life, war, sports. I could al, but the film's actual credits have the same font you've always used.
have chosen a market in Mongolia, but I chose this. Reygadas: The credits will always be like that, it's a way of tying all
Cinéaste: Are you critical of men in general? of the films together. But the collateral work supporting the film
Cinéaste: There's a fascinating aspect of the film dealing with the men Cinéaste: The domestic life in Post Tenebras Lux becomes sadder and
working in the farm community—the guys like Siete and the older guy sadder. It starts on a note of happiness almost like that in a Renoir
talking about the malicious cutting of the tree. They're tough, a hit like painting, and then it grows sadder. It all takes a turn with the robbery,
the guys in Japon, and yet they also have these scenes of pure confes- the shooting of Juan, leading to him losing a lung. The narrative here is
sional, not Catholic, but under the structure of an AA meeting. There's especially strong. You do this in each of your films where the narrative
a temptation to read these as slices of documentary life, but I suspect is deliberately weak for long stretches and then, at a certain point, the
that you engaged in a lot of intervention and invention here, and fic- narrative asserts itself. It seems to slam its fist down on the table and
tionalized actual sources. Is that the case? insists on being there. Do you feel that process while creating the film?
Reygadas: Yes, everything is fictionalized, but they come from real Reygadas: I do, instinctively, but clearly. I've often been associated
sources. It's funny you mention Japon, because the fat guy in that with this notion of nonnarrative cinema. My cinema is tremendous-
scene about cutting down the tree is played by the actor I originally ly narrative. There's always a clear line that connects. I must also
wanted to play the nephew who arrives at the house in Japon and add, however, that I don't agree that cinema is just about telling sto-
wants to remove the stones. I've known him since childhood. He's ries, as so many people argue. You tell stories in painting, too, but
so kind yet can also be so violent and grotesque. painting isn't just about telling stories either. Ginema and painting
Cinéaste: He's hilarious. are driven by images, and the power of conveying feelings through
Reygadas: Speaking with him in Spanish is such a pleasure, he sound and image. But I feel that the story has to be there as a special
speaks in this crazy manner and I completely adore him as an indi- element that conveys what's necessary for the viewer. So yes, I feel
vidual. Everything in these scenes is pulled from moments and that the narrative lias to be down, then up again, and in this film
exchanges and episodes I observed. Even things like the guy who that's consistent, and is told in the present tense. You have this at
talks about killing his sister is something I heard, something really key points, as in the robbery, or near the end at Juan's bedside. The
crazy. I was astonished. You realize the cultural shock that Mexico present tense is like a bone structure for the body of the film, and it
exists in, between a Western world and a world that is not Western has to be strong. When, for example, she's playing Neil Young's "It's
at all. It can be nuts. We have that interaction that can be very rough a Dream," that's like supercondensed narrative.
but also very enriching. It's a rougher place than the United States Cinéaste: "It's a Dream, " and yet your company is No Dream Cinema.
but also richer. I'm not talking about wealth. This shock of cultures Reygadas: Yeah, I hadn't thought of that before. How do you like
is more than a coexistence, it's a natural total intermingling, and it's "It's a Dream"?
so powerful. Cinéaste: It's one of Young's most beautiful songs. My wife had been