Marshland

From the first aerial images of the marshlands, it is clear that the landscape will be much more than a setting. It is beautiful, strange and almost abstract, but it also conveys isolation, dampness and a sense of decay that perfectly matches what Alberto Rodríguez wants to tell. Marshland works extremely well as a police thriller, but what makes it particularly interesting is that the investigation into several disappearances also becomes a portrait of a Spain that is officially changing while still carrying far too much of its past.
The pairing of Javier Gutiérrez and Raúl Arévalo is essential. Pedro represents a police force that wants to belong to a new democracy; Juan carries methods, silences and a past connected to Francoist repression. Rodríguez does not turn that difference into constant speeches. It is there in the looks, in the interrogations, in the way each man understands violence and in everything one knows about the other but chooses not to say. Javier Gutiérrez is particularly unsettling because Juan can be efficient, even likeable at times, without the suspicion about who he really was ever disappearing.
The investigation is built patiently and without turning every discovery into a spectacle. The missing girls reveal a world of sexism, exploitation, fear, local power and people who know far more than they are willing to say. Álex Catalán photographs the marshlands extraordinarily well, while Julio de la Rosa's music increases that constant feeling of threat. There is something almost diseased about the atmosphere: endless roads, fields, rain, isolated houses and a town where everyone seems to know one piece of the truth.
That is precisely why I found it slightly strange that, as the case begins to close, direct responsibility seems to become so concentrated around the gamekeeper and Quini. The film has created the feeling of a much larger network, and I expected the criminal reach to be wider as well. But thinking about it afterwards, I believe that is part of its point: one thing is the people directly involved in the crimes and another is the environment that allows them to happen. Silence, the exploitation of the girls, the power held by certain men and the fear of those who prefer not to speak create a complicity far harder to stop than that of two specific culprits.
And that is where the ending gains all its force. The case may apparently be moving towards a resolution, but another far more uncomfortable question remains: what happens to those who committed atrocities before this new Spain began and simply continued occupying their place? That final "Everything in order, right?" is devastating because it sums up the film's real darkness. A murder may be solved, but the country's past has not been. Pedro now knows what kind of man is standing beside him, and he also knows that probably nothing at all will happen.
That is why I see it as much more than a very good police film. Alberto Rodríguez uses the rules of the genre to talk about the Transition without turning the film into a history lesson. The crime, the landscape, the exploitation of women, social differences and Juan's past all belong to the same atmosphere. I may have expected the criminal plot to uncover a larger network, but the real system exposed by the film was even bigger: a country where many things had changed their names before they had truly changed. Dark, beautifully photographed, superbly acted and ending with far more unease than relief.