This feels like a fairly timeless film, mainly because of its milieu: a remote settlement somewhere in Argentina, or “south of the Rio Grande” as one character puts it.
In many ways, it’s very much a modern-day Western but without the guns and killings. Indeed, the script rather pointedly refers to that genre via one of its characters, a “mercenary” (but not a bad one) called Hans (José Sacristán). And Mario (Frederico Luppi), the patriarch of a household we spend a lot of time with is at one point referred to as a ”frontiersman”. Come to think of it, it’s Hans who makes all of these Western analogies – and accordingly, the script deals with, among other things, corporate entities angling to exploit natural resources while providing landowners with insubstantial remuneration. And co-writer and director Adolfo Aristarain creates a believable setting in which parlous circumstances make hostages of those that have next to nothing.
Mario is an educated man who has set up a collective in the community; he’s a “lefty”, the type of person that businessmen typically wish didn’t exist, mainly because he speaks truth to power while putting ideas into people’s heads. Essentially, he’s one more obstacle for visiting industrialists to dispense with when it comes to getting the locals to acquiesce and give up land that is supposedly worth nothing.
And as someone who has the benefit of an education, Mario takes it upon himself to teach the local kids to the best of his abilities, providing them with not just food for thought but literal food, lest they go hungry.
The oldest of the children is Mario’s own son, Ernesto (Gastón Batyi), who is our POV character. He learns life lessons via the conversations of the various adults around him. Not only is he being educated by his own father, but he’s also picking up wisdom simply by witnessing the words, gestures and deeds of his elders.
His parents don’t treat him like a kid; they’re well aware that all of this exposure to the ‘adult world’ will provide him with a good grounding for his adult life. And his real-world schooling includes the influence of Hans, a geologist who has a particular knack for imparting knowledge. He transfixes the kids with his take on his specialist subject, telling them that rocks can speak a language, which once translated can tell us so much about the history of the world. And when he informs them that whenever they put one foot in front of the other, they are walking on molten fire (the Earth’s core, of course), the kids are rapt, Ernesto’s mother and father are rapt. And I’m rapt. It’s a magical moment in the film.
The script leans into politics in a most interesting way, politics in the widest sense of the word. For instance, the magnetic sway exerted by major cities such as Madrid and Buenos Aries. And where it is that one feels one belongs in the world (hence the film’s title). And capitalism and its deleterious effect on the poor – the way it keeps people in their places, including Luciana (Lorena del Río), whom Ernesto is in love with. She’s never been given the opportunity to learn to read, and though Mario offers to teach her, Luciana’s father refuses because he’s prescribed her destiny: she’ll carry on working at the family homestead, in lieu of an actual matriarchal figure. But Ernesto knows the ability to read can help free Luciana, which is why elects to teach her covertly.
And then there’s the thorny subject of religion. This part of the world is predominantly catholic, of course, but Ernesto has been raised to make his own mind up and he’s an avowed agnostic, not that he pushes his beliefs on those with religious faith. However, his mother, Ana (Cecilia Roth) is of Jewish heritage. And Hans, who hails from the Spanish capital, is half-German and tells a fascinating story about how his mother and father met, which directly relates to the Jewish experience. And with certain scare tactics being resorted to within the community, the spectre of fascism rears its ugly head when a swastika is daubed on a wall. And by this point, we’ve already heard a tragic story about Ana’s brother back in Buenos Aries, about a time when people were routinely ‘disappeared’ by a tyrannous regime – and this sorry familial event has a poignant bearing on the name of Ana and Mario’s son. And for what it’s worth, we learn that Hans engaged in the fight against Franco back in Spain.
And Hans… he’s something of an anarchist, an appellation that local nun Nelda (Leonor Benedetto) applies to herself because she finds she’s unable to fully conform to the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church. In this way as in others, she’s similar to Hans, who works for people whose worldviews he doesn’t necessarily share.
There’s so much going on in this film, which on the surface, appears to be about very little, certainly in terms of pure plot. Un lugar en el mundo isn’t narratively driven as such; I suppose it’s what one might call a coming-of-age tale. And though I’ve talked at length about it already, there’s so much more to appreciate about a film that is perhaps, to quote one of its recurring motifs, as beautiful as the moon.
Elektrical Turbulence 