What is the function of cinema? What is it there for? On the one hand, it ties into a longing for escapism, for the dream, the notion that beyond the confines of this cruel world there’s another one, in which we are funnier or stronger or at least different. Chaplin and Fast and Furious and ET all fit into this category. On the other hand, it’s a mirror to the world. It shows us things that we know are there but cannot otherwise see. Apocalypse Now, Ken Loach, Sanjines, to name a few references. Any film postulates itself somewhere on this binary chart. Sometimes a film slots into both categories, sometimes it’s resolutely aimed at solely one. Documentary, almost inevitably tends towards the latter. Documentary cannot help but be trapped in realism.
Los Olvidados fits firmly into this category. It depicts life in a Montevidean barrio, Marconi, which is by and large considered too dangerous for people to visit. It’s talked about as a no-go area, one even the police will only approach armed to the nines. Los Olvidados, its title a nod to Buñuel, takes the viewer there in the company of ‘Don Koni’, a rapper who is trying to convey with his music the realties of living in the barrio, for better or for worse. The film gives its characters cameras so that they can film inside the barrio. What emerges is a fractured portrait, of a place seeking to defend its dignity in the face of neglect from the authorities and media stigmatisation. It’s an honest, important, low key film. I may never go to Marconi, even though it’s just down the road from where I live. So long as the class dividing lines remain rigid, they are nigh-on impossible to cross. People become attached to their perceptions, narratives remain intractable. One of the only ways we can visit is via the medium of film. Flores’ film doesn’t seek to dress its characters up, there’s no hint of escapism or ghetto porn. It’s a window onto a world which is our world, those of us who live in this city, and beyond.
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