EL CHACAL DE NAHUELTORO survives for now, and I am glad, because it's a film I would regret losing the chance to see. It is familiar in its focus but original in its telling, and that originality plays no small part in the effect it achieves. Its impoverished locale suggests Béla Tarr, but its shooting style suggests, of all people, Wong Kar-Wai. Or perhaps, more accurately, one of Wong's French antecedents. A film of 1970, EL CHACAL seems uncannily tuned in to the frantic energy of the French New Wave. The first flowerings of the Nouvelle Vague had only just begun to infect cinemas of the world, and though I can't speak with any authority on the cinephile circles of 1960s Chile, it seems stunning to me nonetheless that Littín would have internalized the Nouvelle Vague to such an extent already. Beyond its appreciation for kinetics, the film seems similarly aware of how a generic plot can be distorted to lay bare inner truths. EL CHACAL contains elements of the procedural, the redemption drama, and the neorealist cri de coeur, but is ultimately none of those things. It is, in its hybridity, something new. It sees differently. By watching it, so do we. Littín's camera is perpetually unmoored, ambulating along a depressed rural Chile in pursuit of one restless soul. This is El Chacal, the Jackal, and his life seems defined by movement as much as Littín's cinema. Our first glimpse into his childhood finds him at a sprint. He is being chased by a Chilean policeman, but the fury of his young feet seems to suggest something far larger is after him.
El Chacal, or José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, is rootless in the most fundamental ways. With no father and a mother barely able to support him, José's early life is a string of trials with no resolutions. José's affectless voiceover in recounting these years reveals the full damage of these hardships. There is no room for fondness, modulation, or even distance. The miseries of those times are the miseries of now. José's life has not improved in any appreciable way, and his final damnation seems like the most inevitable of all. Alone and intoxicated, he kills, in quick succession, a widow and her five children. Though each killing has its own gravity, I was viscerally repelled by the sight of El Chacal stomping on a baby's carriage. The mere filmic association between wailing cries and crushing foot made my breath catch in my throat, even though there was plainly no infant was actually harmed.
There is a bottomless mystery here that the film never pretends to know, and that is what interior state could possibly compel such a series of murders, most of whom were children. The film's José is repeatedly asked that question, and other than a twistedly honorable desire to not have the orphaned children suffer, he has no answers for us. I like this very much about the film, because no narrative could convey the depths of such pain, victim or perpetrator. Movies may be able to conjure the fantastical madness of homicide at times, and certainly the "antihero" concept/narrative is predicated on some notion of proximity leading to understanding. I find those approaches rudimentary and useless, respectively, so it pleases me to see EL CHACAL DE NAHUELTORO leaving its main character's personality as something of a cipher. Littín is correct: El Chacal is a product of social forces, and though we may become familiar with other aspects of his personality, it is a fool's task to try and vicariously educate ourselves about the act of killing. And I very much doubt the real José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres could teach us anything we don't already know.
In place of psychologizing unfathomable moral transgressions, Littín opts to examine inhumanity of a more familiar kind. The bigger crime, a crime too vast to fully grasp, is the endurance of living conditions that starved José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres of any hope for a better future. Poverty, in its benumbed agony, leaves human beings jagged and raw. Help comes from nowhere, cruelty comes from everywhere. Chile is hardly the only guilty nation, but especially before Allende, it had little help to give its poorest citizens. More often than not, they died as they lived, destitute and ignored. The irony at work here is that El Chacal's lifelong poverty was more than normal in his time, it was expected. Neither did the widow and her five children receive any help that might have kept their paths from crossing El Chacal's. It was only his eventual brutality against them that brought the group of them any attention. One can almost see the seeds of a satire here, murder as the key to overcoming lifelong invisibility.
But that's not what Miguel Littín is up to. His approach is despairing but gentle. It's clear that he has empathy for the widow and her hardships. One stray line of dialogue, about the difficulties faced by the bereaved once their loved ones can no longer help, sums up a lifetime of struggle. She and each of her children bore their own private crosses, and Littín grants them the place they deserve in the narrative of their killer. At first, it may seem that they are the real-life subjects more worthy of a cinematic tribute. As Littín's formally oblique narrative reaches its midpoint, though, his approach becomes clear. El Chacal, like so many anonymous strivers, find his life changed by sudden fame. He is partially rehabilitated, learning to read, craft, and connect with other people. Vagrant no more, he can focus on matters other than brute survival. I've said little of lead actor Nelson Villagra so far, but his performance seems almost designed to elude easy description. El Chacal, in this film, recedes from both personal interactions and the movie frame. Despite his notorious crime, the man himself creates little impression before or after it. He is barely present in his own life's story. It is only when he receives the kindnesses of society does he, at long last, speak up for himself. The detachment of his early autobiography morphs into deep engagement in his new life. José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, it turns out, likes soccer. He likes to construct guitars, and he accepts the faith that was thrust upon him before it meant anything. He feels remorse for a crime whose origins he cannot explain. As a (puzzlingly nondescript) supporting character interviews him for television, José hopes aloud that Chile's president will be moved by his progress and pardon him.
Can it be a coincidence that this film was released in 1970, the year of Salvador Allende's election? Miguel Littín more or less avoids the actual work of the political process, preferring instead to depict Chile's countryside as its living, breathing result. The tragedies simply pile up by inertia. Then they give way for a brief moment, and José finds himself removed from the vicious cycle. The narrative follows as he grows and learns, cresting with his final plea for mercy. Judging by the decadent parade that accompanies as Chile's president meets Brazil's, even such an inspirational transformation cannot puncture the apathy. What head of state could be bothered to recognize a lowly murderer's moral awakening? The film evinces no anger, only a bitter resignation. Far from reducing EL CHACAL DE NAHUELTORO to an apolitical film, Littín's narrative points all the way to the top. If Patricio Gúzman chronicled the first time a president gave a damn about the poor, then Miguel Littín reminds us why such a president was necessary in the first place.
(photo credit: en.wikipedia.org)
But that's not what Miguel Littín is up to. His approach is despairing but gentle. It's clear that he has empathy for the widow and her hardships. One stray line of dialogue, about the difficulties faced by the bereaved once their loved ones can no longer help, sums up a lifetime of struggle. She and each of her children bore their own private crosses, and Littín grants them the place they deserve in the narrative of their killer. At first, it may seem that they are the real-life subjects more worthy of a cinematic tribute. As Littín's formally oblique narrative reaches its midpoint, though, his approach becomes clear. El Chacal, like so many anonymous strivers, find his life changed by sudden fame. He is partially rehabilitated, learning to read, craft, and connect with other people. Vagrant no more, he can focus on matters other than brute survival. I've said little of lead actor Nelson Villagra so far, but his performance seems almost designed to elude easy description. El Chacal, in this film, recedes from both personal interactions and the movie frame. Despite his notorious crime, the man himself creates little impression before or after it. He is barely present in his own life's story. It is only when he receives the kindnesses of society does he, at long last, speak up for himself. The detachment of his early autobiography morphs into deep engagement in his new life. José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, it turns out, likes soccer. He likes to construct guitars, and he accepts the faith that was thrust upon him before it meant anything. He feels remorse for a crime whose origins he cannot explain. As a (puzzlingly nondescript) supporting character interviews him for television, José hopes aloud that Chile's president will be moved by his progress and pardon him.
Can it be a coincidence that this film was released in 1970, the year of Salvador Allende's election? Miguel Littín more or less avoids the actual work of the political process, preferring instead to depict Chile's countryside as its living, breathing result. The tragedies simply pile up by inertia. Then they give way for a brief moment, and José finds himself removed from the vicious cycle. The narrative follows as he grows and learns, cresting with his final plea for mercy. Judging by the decadent parade that accompanies as Chile's president meets Brazil's, even such an inspirational transformation cannot puncture the apathy. What head of state could be bothered to recognize a lowly murderer's moral awakening? The film evinces no anger, only a bitter resignation. Far from reducing EL CHACAL DE NAHUELTORO to an apolitical film, Littín's narrative points all the way to the top. If Patricio Gúzman chronicled the first time a president gave a damn about the poor, then Miguel Littín reminds us why such a president was necessary in the first place.
(photo credit: en.wikipedia.org)
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