soldado (w&d manuel abramovich)

Abramovich’s documentary opens with an extended single take, shot on a long lens, showing soldiers from the Argentine army attempting to get into formation. This is interrupted by the arrival of more soldiers, and then more. The scene becomes chaotic. It’s not clear what the soldiers are doing, or even trying to do. The film lets the scene run for about five minutes, before the opening credits come up. It’s a bold piece of direction/ editing, which gives time for the viewer to reflect, before the film has even got going. As to plays out, it’s hard not to see the scene as a metaphor for the country itself. 

Thereafter the film follows the story of one soldier as he embarks on his career in the army. He’s a trainee drummer in the army band. The film is rigorously fly-on-the-wall. We are always observing the young man, who rarely speaks. We intuit his feelings, rather than being told. It’s only when, at one point, he goes to the doctor and explains how he’s vomiting and suffering from terrible headaches that we realise the toll that the whole process is taking on him. Towards the end of the movie, the young man returns to visit his mother and his hometown, and we get to see another side to him, although, if I’m honest, this was the part of the film which least convinced me. The film is great at capturing the dehumanising process of being in the army, where your identity has to be subsumed to fit into the greater whole. The protagonist is no Woyzeck; it almost seems as though, within the chaos of his country, he finds solace in the anonymity the army bestows. 

There’s a great deal of artistry to the way in which the film is shot (by Abramovich himself), edited and sound designed. It’s an immersive, textural journey. There’s plenty of sly irony captured by the camera, in line with that opening scene, including another where a sergeant major urges the troops to makes sure they take out proper life insurance. One member of the battalion has died, (we never learn the cause of his death), without sufficient insurance to ensure a proper burial, something his family won’t be able to afford. The security of the barracks keeps the harshness of contemporary Argentina at bay, but only just. The spectre of the dictatorship and the Malvinas hangs over this apparently neutral portrayal, which got the army’s approval. The fact that the protagonist is such a sympathetic character helps to soften the portrayal of the military; but then a brief scene of older men, not in uniform, coming together to attend the passing out ceremony, instantly raises the question: what was their role in the Military Dictatorship? And what would be the role of the protagonist if that spectre were to return?