Jauja
Director: Lisandro Alonso
Year Released: 2014
Rating: 1.0
The daughter of a soldier (Viggo Mortensen) runs off with a young man, leading diligent Dad to chase after her: along the way he drinks water, climbs rocks, drinks more water, has an encounter with a thief (who steals his rifle and horse!), drinks more water and then talks to an enigmatic old woman. Pseudo-philosophical and self-conscious 'art film' that gives tiny bits and pieces to the audience and expects everyone to draw connections and fill in the blanks ... except no matter how you 'assemble' the narrative, it's still vacuous. The third act kind of flips what there exists of a 'story' around, changing time frames and locations, and it never struck me as an extraordinary dénouement, but rather Alonso and co-screenwriter Fabian Casas running out of anywhere for the Mortensen character to go (he's abandoned), and more cribbing from Alice in Wonderland (which may be giving everyone entirely too much credit). It's basically Arrabal with a sense of composure and sobriety - a collection of recorded landscapes without a thesis. Try not to shoot your penciled-in outline, film-kids-raised-on-film.
