Zama

Zama topped the most recent Film Comment's critic's poll as best film of the year. There is a certain kind critic who doesn't go in for popcorn films, or even conventional art house films. They go for stuff that nobody has seen or in some cases heard of. Zama is an Argentinian film about the colonial days of that country. It is at times maddeningly slow, but at other times gripping. It is unlike any film I've ever seen.

Directed by Lucrecia Martel, Zama is occasionally surreal, occasionally funny, occasionally brutal, occasionally hallucinatory. Zama is about Don Diego de Zama, the magistrate sent by Spain to manage a colony in Argentina. A joke, which is part Catch-22 and part Beckett, is that the Don has been waiting for his transfer. It never arrives. It is mordantly funny when he deals with the piggish governor, who is always promising to write a letter to the King to get him transferred. When de Zama asks about it, the governor always says, "What letter?"

The other surreal joke is that there is a bandit, called Vicuna, who is terrorizing the countryside, although everyone says he has been executed. The governor even wears the criminal's severed ears around his neck. Reality is a bit off in this film--nothing can be taken at face value.

I'm not sure when the film is set (presumably the eighteenth century) or how long a period it covers, but de Zama is old and gray at the end, still waiting for his transfer. He ends up in a posse of men still chasing Vicuna. There are interactions with natives, who show themselves much more competent in battle than the Spaniards. I see Zama as a satire of the limits of colonialism and government imposed on others. I think the whole film can be summed up on one visit de Zama makes to the governor's office, and a llama wanders in, and no one looks twice.

Daniel Gimenez Cacho plays de Zama, and he's quite good. We really don't know much about him, other than he seems to be in constant suffering of some sort or another. At times he's like a man sent back in time, and misses the luxuries of contemporary life, but has to stoically put up with everything around him. To get his letter, the Governor makes him write a report up on a man writing a book, which was verboten at that time and place.

Zama is difficult to get into, because there is no exposition and it takes a while to figure out what the hell is going on. It's worth sticking with for the last act.