La Libertad

The most important film from Argentina in the 00s is not your average hey-here's-this-guy kind of film/documentary. While it invades the life of a worker without any interview, shooting every scene as in a fiction feature, there is a couple of questions raised by Alonso's approach -- what is real and what is result of rehearsal?, and what is character and what is real person? This is life as told, lived and framed by cinema.

"A deeply penetrating and humbling experience." - Ed Gonzalez

Slow and contemplative film about a day in the Argentinian outback, chopping some wood for a few bucks a day. The cinematography is rough, though it shows talent, and much of the film has those same qualities. The pacing could be a bit better but the film is short and so it mostly works out, mixing monotony with little moments of action or conversation.

Reflects the life of a young man trying to earn a living chopping some woods. The film let the viewer feel the isolation of this young man, also shows his survival skills.

alonso's protagonists are extensions of their environment, and it's those spontaneous, magical moments when his camera wanders away from the primary subject into that environment - inquisitively buzzing through the brush or tilting gently toward the sky - that we sense most clearly the definition of the character we've left behind; his boundaries, his freedoms, what he has and what he lacks, his state of being.

(Viewed 22/01/14): Alonso's uber minimalist debut raises all kinds of pertinent questions about the merits of contemporary 'slow cinema'. What is being offered here to contemplate exactly? Is it enough to watch a solitary man chop firewood for an hour? Is this an example of a new materialist cinema, focusing on the quotidian aspects of a marginal existence, or is it something else entirely? At what point does an emphasis on the mundane transcend its very mundanity? Questions, questions.

This is seriously one of the vivacious films I have seen in a long time. It was a portal from the camera to the real life at near best.

Estreava há 20 anos na Argentina. Claro que fiquei com uma vibe de Jeanne Dielman por todo filme, o que me levou a vislumbrar uma possível pequena revolta anti-capitalista do protagonista e que infelizmente não acontece, apenas reitera ele envolvido na ideologia patriarcal capitalista ao devorar um animal, o que não diminui a qualidade do filme, mas apenas privilegia o conformismo do trabalhador, ironicamente um conformismo chamado de liberdade. DVDrip no MakingOff.