Federico Veiroj’s second feature film was initially introduced to American audiences through the efforts of the Global Film Initiative, which was founded by Susan Weeks Coulter in 2002. I would gather that the main purpose of the initiative was to support and promote the work of filmmakers from around the globe and to make such work available to American audiences, a mission that I would certainly support. For a period of about 10 years it ran a Global Lens program to bring foreign films to US theaters and beyond. La Vita Útil was included as part of its 2011 class of films. This program by all appearances is currently defunct and I’m not quite sure whatever became of the Global Film Initiative. The last Global Lens program that I found was from 2014. This occurred not long after FilmRise acquired the distribution rights for the entire GFI collection. There are Facebook and Twitter accounts for the GFI, but there haven’t been any posts to either since October … … of 2015.
Nonetheless as part of its’ inclusion into the Global Lens program, this film had a short limited run in New York City in January of 2011 and has been screened at various film festivals throughout the US. Beyond this I can’t imagine that there have been many other screenings in American theaters. As for DVDs, there doesn’t appear to have been any official US distribution. According to worldcat.org, import DVDs can be found at random university libraries throughout the US, but apart from this you’re going to be out of luck. The best way to watch this film is through the website Tubi. Before I get to the proper critique of the film though, perhaps it’s best to reveal the synopsis, as it’s given on IMDB.
A movie-theater employee adjusts to a new life after the cinema he worked at for over 25 years is forced to shut down.I should state that I am not oblivious to the irony that the most accessible way for an American to watch this film 10+ years later is through an online stream. I should also state for the record, that a ‘vast majority’ of the films that I’ve watched in my life have been accessed through either DVDs, VHS cassette tapes, or online streams. Honestly I haven’t seen a film in an actual theater since October … … of 2015. So keep in mind that a film about a man facing an existential crisis over the slow death of the theatrical cinema industry is going to be critiqued by a man who hasn’t been to a movie theater in over 6 years. This should be interesting.
I thought the cinematography was excellent and over the course of the entire film complimented the story wonderfully. Early in the film the style depended largely on exquisitely staged shots that were framed with great attention to detail. Some of the shot lengths were rather long in duration but even then they avoided the point of becoming truly exhausting. With the way the scenes were edited and sequenced the film had a very brisk and lively pace. Granted with an overall running time of only 65 minutes, which included a lengthy credit sequence in the beginning, some may argue that the pace was a bit too fast. It’s rare to encounter a film that could have benefited from a greater amount of padding, but this may be one such film. I certainly thought that a longer running time could have allowed for some greater development of the characters or of the story, and there was clearly some room for improvement in both of these areas.
Regardless though of how long the film was, I found little to complain about in regards to how it was shot. There was a discernible artfulness in much of the imagery, especially the shots of the characters standing in the lobby where they were flanked by a rendering of Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. It was also interesting to see shots linger on a character even as the action took place out of frame. This showed a tendency towards a more intimate, character focused narrative. The sparse use of any real soundtrack combined with the clean, yet stark black and white imagery offered an ambiance of intense realism that you would expect from a low-budget indie film. The early scenes were also noted for its conspicuous lack of camera movement. The use of static shots here felt harmonious with the seemingly dire rut that the characters appeared to be stuck in when one first encountered them.
Initially the acting would represent the antithesis of compelling. Jorge Jellinek, as the film’s protagonist Jorge, early on relied too much on his glum, poker-faced countenance when in the presence of others. His body language and physical acting in such moments concealed more than it revealed. He projected the character as someone who had grown so comfortable with his life’s passion that a certain lethargy had set in to where he went about his work in a rather thoughtless, perfunctory manner. When Jellinek was recording his promo spot, his speech was steady, fluid and yet lacking any hint of excitement. The same listless, mechanical quality in his speech also appeared when Jellinek was recording content for his radio show and when he was introducing a local Uruguarian director to the patrons at the theater.
Manuel Martínez Carril as Martínez was slightly better at showing some emotion and personality in his performance and this difference can be seen in the meeting that was held regarding the technical issues with the projectors. Here you can really sense the aura of despair in how he responded to the theater’s financial difficulties. But even then he didn’t stray too far away from the motif of effete cinephilia that plagued the early portion of the film. There was a certain zombie-esque quality about the way Martínez walked past the main theater. There was also a noticeable apathy seen in the lackadaisical manner in which Martínez held the script while voicing the Spanish language translation for one of their feature presentations. During his appearance on the radio show, Martínez’s delivery was dry and dispassionate which gave the impression of a person capable of rambling on at great length about a certain subject. This impression however did ever so slightly mask the fact that his character had a lot of interesting things to say in his speech.
Both performers had good material to work with. In fact some lines of dialogue were rather striking in their saliency and beauty. Unfortunately the larger narrative around such writing was not particularly well developed. The film started out as a rather plotless character study, one for which the impending and seemingly inevitable closure of the theater did nothing to inspire any particular emotion or dramatic intensity out of the performers. Both Jorge and Martínez seemed to know that the theater’s days were numbered and yet they were so remarkably casual and accepting of their coming fate. They remained steadfast in trudging forward with their work for as long as they are able to do so. One saw this same quality among the other employees as well, especially when they reacted to Jorge’s news of their financial troubles with a brief, awkward pause before returning undeterred to their discussion regarding the projectors. Ultimately though I thought Martínez was the best at expressing the futility of their lame duck status, and in this regard his performance really distinguished itself from the rest of the cast.
What was especially bittersweet about the shuttering of the Cinemateca was the fact that the people who ran it possessed an interesting taste for cinema. These were people willing to explore the works of various Icelandic filmmakers, or champion the careers of auteurs like Manoel de Oliveira, or screen forgotten silent era classics like Erich von Stroheim’s Greed. The inclusion of von Stroheim’s masterpiece was significant for a couple of reasons. First it showed that both Jorge and Martínez were perhaps relics of a bygone era who clearly favored the ‘classics’ over more contemporary cinematic achievements. I almost hate to say this but in a modern era of widespread home media distribution and online streaming, people don’t need the Cinemateca as much as it needs the support of its patrons. Today the work of directors like Manoel de Oliveira can be accessed without someone waiting for a theater to screen one of his films. While in certain respects I think this is a good thing, it should force Jorge and Martínez to reconsider the purpose for their theater. There’s a part of me that can’t avoid interpreting the film as being about men who stubbornly abide to an antiquated business model to the point of irrevocable insolvency. Granted Greed may also offer some historical symbolism regarding what gets lost in the conflict between culture and commerce. In their meeting with the Foundation, both men had to face the reality that there’s no place in the modern world for those who partake in the practice of supporting unprofitable works of cultural merit. With this outcome one might suspect that the film may have presciently foretold the fate of the institution that brought it to the United States. It’s an interesting thought to consider, if supporting La Vita Útil would result in the same type of financial ruin that was chronicled within the film itself. Nonetheless once the theater got shut down, the film managed to become stranger and more interesting.
For one it resulted in a better acting performance from Jellinek who surprised me in how vividly and emotionally distraught he was while riding a bus in the aftermath of losing his job. I also liked his carefree, whimsical dancing on the steps of the law school. Losing a sense of purpose in his life brought out a different side to the character which made the film more charming. In his ‘nobility of lying’ speech, he exhibited a warmth and humanity that was absent when he addressed the patrons at the theater earlier in the film. In a bizarre twist he projected a certain ease and comfort when pretending to be someone else as opposed to the moments when he was true to his own character. Of course one has to consider if Jellinek ever truly portrayed his own identity. The speech that he gave to the law students could be seen as a defense of filmmaking as a practice where one gracefully masters the art of lying. In the real world Cinemateca Uruguaya still exists. Jorge Jellinek probably never worked there. There was never a film called Febrero made in Uruguay. Paola Venditto was probably never a student in law school. All films present an artificially staged and constructed reality.
Towards the end the cinematography also played a greater role in crafting the film’s fiction. The latter scenes in the film employed more vibrant, energetic camera movements alongside some dramatic background music. This combined with a staging and mise-en-scène that lacked a distinct modernity that one would associate with the 21st century, suggested that Jorge had swiftly descended into a fantasy world within his mind, where his own life had become a film. If the film started out as a near replica of the indie aesthetic as established by the likes of Andrew Bujalski, it concluded as a vintage 1940s Hollywood romantic feature which perhaps better reflected the world in which its protagonist would prefer to live in.