The first two acts of Zama are dominated, in classic Martel fashion, by what we don’t see. The film, in spite of its lustrous period setting, tends towards the closed frame. Rarely have the details of costume seemed so important. The extravagant pattern of a jacket. The sunken bodice of a a dress. Zama has a craggy face, whose lines say more than the words he speaks. The narrative, like this world, is opaque. Zama hopes for a letter to the king, giving him license to go home. But the path to the letter is paved with obstacles. He’s trapped in a Kafkaesque new world. Sickness stalks the land. The indians live in a parallel universe. Everyone is strange: a melting pot of Indians, Africans and Europeans that never coalesces. The other is around every corner. The things we don’t see or half-see are more telling that what we do see. A gunshot; an affair; a rumour. The things that matter occur beyond the range of the camera’s eye.
In the last act, this closed perspective changes. The third act opens with a wide shot, a band of men making their way through a sodden, palm-struck field. The canvas is bigger. The world has come to Zama. Something which, for the protagonist, is not good news. The rhythm of the film changes. Things start to happen. Terrible things. A Latino variant on the heart of darkness. Martel lets the light in. What it shows is fragmentary, violent, terrifying. The next three hundred years of a continent laid out in miniature. The bewitching penultimate shot of a mutilated Zama being paddled in a boat through water lilies emphasises the confusion, the violent intervention, the accidental, incomprehensible beauty.
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