The central metaphor of Argentine director Santiago Mitre’s political thriller is a montage of four aerial views of a long winding mountain road. As viewed from above the road seems flat, like a tapeworm winding back and forth on the surface.
That surface is deceptive. On the ground the road winds dramatically up a mountain and it winds down that mountain. It’s a tortuous deception that — to hijack Polonious — by indirection finds direction out. The metaphor works on both the political and psychological levels. In both, an apparently flat surface may conceal profound hidden depths and unsuspected rises.
Politically there are several tortuous paths exposed. Argentinian President Blanco is a provincial mayor that a radio commentator dismisses as “invisible” and ineffectual. He will prove hapless on the imminent international stage. His presidential campaign played on his eponymous whiteness, his virtue and innocence. But the plunging winding road of his political exposure here reveals a politician as worldly, self-serving and corrupt as the others. That white proves foul.
At the summit the South American countries gather at a Chilean mountaintop to formalize a plan to create a multi-state oil production company. The fraternal or communal pretence is initially a veneer over the Brazilian president’s imperial ambition. The long and winding road digs deeper to expose the other state heads’ conniving and reciprocal betrayals.
The given intention is to escape American domination. But as the road deepens Blanco submits to a covert American plan. Christian Slater plays the deliciously slimy American agent. Blanco will pretend to oppose the applications from America and from the Central American countries to join the group. But the latter’s eventual admission will pave the way for America’s eventual entry as well.
Proving the countries are — in one head’s argument — neighbours not brothers, Blanco will sell his fellows out for a secret bribe of six million yankee greenbacks deposited in a secret Bahamas bank account.
In an early scene Blanco refuses to discuss a colleague’s proposal unless he stops using the term “gringo.” What seems like political sensitivity prefigures his sellout. Similarly, upon landing he walks briskly past a dark-haired beauty — who is then revealed to be his impatiently waiting mistress. The still-water hero runs deep — and turgid.
The psychological descent is dramatized in Blanco’s daughter Marina’s breakdown, which proceeds from marital to mental. Her name evokes the innocent, beguiled daughter of the omnipotent Prospero in The Tempest.
Marina’s lover has left her and threatens to expose her father’s corrupt past. On the eve of the summit Blanco’s “people” (i.e., staff, henchmen, hand-dirtiers, etc) resolve to deal with this danger so that it won’t upset the important meeting. The deep murk won’t reach the summit. As the main business proceeds on the mountain top, that threat is disposed of in the marketplace. It’s a “stroke” likely of covert action. Despite the public and medical explanations, Marina is certain her lover’s fatal stroke is attributable to her “assassin” father.
Her breakdown may be triggered by her lover’s leaving, but it’s rooted in her profound suspicion about her father. Under hypnosis she “remembers” a trauma that may or may not have happened to her. Blanco denies it. She may have heard a rumour and embraced it as experience: her father’s arson attack on a neighbour, her loss of a horse she never had. When Blanco pauses roadside, sees three wild horses grazing below, and impulsively leaves without his attendant minister, he acts like he’s seen Banquo’s ghost. Marina’s fantasy may bear truth.
The stifling atmosphere she addresses by throwing a chair through the hotel window represents the terror of a woman discovering her father is far more and even farther less than he seems. White is the colour of death as well as emptiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment