May 27, 2012 - NY Times - Dennis Lim
CANNES, France — At 40, Carlos Reygadas is firmly established as the leading enfant terrible of Mexican cinema and a favored son of the Cannes Film Festival. All four of his features, starting with his 2002 debut, “Japón,” have been shown here; on his previous trip, in 2007, he won the Jury Prize (the equivalent of third place) for the Dreyer-inspired “Silent Light.” An impressionistic home movie of sorts, albeit on a cosmic scale, Mr. Reygadas’s fourth feature, “Post Tenebras Lux,” which had its premiere here this week, concerns a well-off couple (Adolfo Jimenez Castro and Nathalia Acevedo) who live in the Mexican countryside with their two children (played by Mr. Reygadas’s children, Rut and Eleazar). Mr. Reygadas’s taste for the awe and terror of the sublime is in evidence again, as is his confrontational streak — there is candid sex and (off-screen) animal cruelty, as well as a luminescent red devil with visible genitalia. But the biggest provocations in the film are its aesthetic and narrative liberties. Shot with distorting lenses and edited with little regard for chronology or traditional signposts, “Post Tenebras Lux” (the Latin title means “After Darkness, Light”) resembles a documentary at times and a dream at others. It can be hard to tell if certain incongruous sequences — a house party, a rugby match, an orgy at a sauna — are taking place in the past, the future or someone’s imagination. There were belligerent boos and hooting at the press screening on Wednesday evening. In an interview on the terrace of the Grand Hotel the next afternoon, Mr. Reygadas, who does not lack for opinions or self-assurance (he spoke candidly of fellow filmmakers here, like Sergei Loznitsa, Ulrich Seidl, Darezhan Omirbayev and Leos Carax), was more than willing to defend his movie and take on its detractors. Edited excerpts from the conversation follow:Cannes has been good to you and important for your career. But based on the reactions last night, do you wonder if this is really the best environment for an adventurous filmmaker?
Not in the short term, but it is in the long run, as long as there’s exposure and as long as some people like the film. People asked me today how can you have the [nerve] to do something like that, and I said, I know that if I like it, there will be some other people who like it. In the time of the Greeks, Seneca said, the better a piece of art, the more rejection it will receive in its moment — that’s a social law. I don’t know why people are so worried, like some of my distributors. I tell them don’t worry, who cares? This is positive; you should be honored.
Did you expect such hostile reactions? “Post Tenebras Lux” actually seems much gentler than some of your earlier films.
Yeah, totally. Friends in Mexico who saw it didn’t think it would be so divisive. You know, people here are tired, they’re paid to judge, and they think they have to judge before they feel. The other day someone asked me whose films I’m looking forward to. And I said I care about Loznitsa [in competition with “In the Fog”], Seidl [“Paradise: Love”] and Omirbayev [whose film “Student” is in the Un Certain Regard section]. One thing that annoys me: why is a man like Omirbayev not in competition? It’s not good for cinema. I understand there have to be films with stars. But how many films are there in competition this year about cinema, by people trying to make cinema? Kiarostami, Seidl, Carax, probably four or five or six.
To get back to “Post Tenebras Lux” let’s talk a bit about the film’s distinctive look. It’s shot in the boxy 1:33 aspect radio and, in many scenes, with a lens that creates a halo-like effect, with a sharp focus at the center of the image and a blurred circle on the edges.
Why did I want that look? Because aesthetics are in the end are a reinterpretation of the world. Why did you use this effect only for exterior scenes? It was intuitive. I feel that somehow we experience the senses more outdoors. The outside world is where impressionism started. I was also thinking of glass that was made before the 1950s, where they pretended to make it perfect but the machines weren’t. It’s a little bit curved and creates little reflections, so you look through a window and you actually feel the glass — things look different — and there’s a reinterpretation of reality. The landscape where I was shooting is very particular. I did “Silent Light” in CinemaScope because those were very flat, huge landscapes, and here it’s surrounded by very steep mountains. I also wanted the sense of everything being totally centered in a square format — it’s like things are more respected if they’re composed that way.
This seems in many ways a deeply personal film: your children are in it; it was edited by your wife, Natalia López; and it was shot mostly in a location you know well.
It’s the village where I live, about 80 kilometers south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos. It’s a very personal film in the source, in where it comes from,, and the place and many of the things that happen are dear and close to me. But the values of the people in the film are not mine. I don’t share the way they see life or treat people or relate to each other. The film was built up during a period of couple of years when I was building my house in the countryside, where the weather is rough, with the sun, the dust, the cold. At the same time I was walking a lot in the mountains with my children and my dogs, which you also see in the film, and I just wanted to share that. Some scenes — like in the sauna where the wife has sex with other people — are there because it’s also about desire. The film is about fantasy, but probably that scene is reality, who knows? I wanted to show that these people, while frustrated to a certain extent, are also capable of sometimes trespassing certain limits, which makes them a little more special than people who don’t. Perhaps the refusal to distinguish between fantasy and reality is what bothers some people about the film. There’s no code — that was the idea from the beginning. I’ve always thought that intelligent viewers don’t need to be led and will follow eventually. Something I find really strange is that the people who saw the film here last night went to school, read books, and I say this not because I’m comparing myself — but think of “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka, which was written almost a hundred years ago. Nobody knows if he really transforms into an insect or not, and there’s no explanation, and if there was an explanation, I’m sure we wouldn’t be reading that book anymore. Why is it that when people read it — or read Joyce, and again, I’m not saying that I’m like Joyce — but why can they read and accept these books, but why do they need explanations when they’re watching films?
I don’t want to press you for explanations, but can you talk about the personal significance of some of the more enigmatic passages, for instance the scenes of English schoolboys playing rugby? I know you went to school in England.
I went for a year and a half, and I liked rugby very much, I loved its physicality. The film is not a postmodernist, relativist thing. Things can be clearly explained. It’s a film about Juan, who lives, who imagines, who remembers, and probably we see bits of his life. He could have been on a rugby team when he was young. But the rugby scene is also there at the end to mean that life goes on, we keep on playing and we need to play, disregarding the fact that it’s raining blood in Mexico and heads are being torn off. Rugby’s a good fit for the film: the physicality of it matches the violence of the land, of nature, of life, but at the same time there’s love. I love what this English boy says at the end, which could be a statement against bankers: they’re strong, they’re terrible, but we are a team and we will not let them destroy us, so carry on, let’s go. It’s a rebellious film in that sense.
