Underwhelming documentary on Chilean master Raúl Ruiz
By Pablo Suarez
Points: 5
Alejandra Rojo’s documentary Contre l’ignorance Fiction! borrows its title from a quote by Chilean filmmaker wizard Raúl Ruiz, who, among many other considerations, can be seen as one the most resourceful and accomplished directors of a very personal vein of surrealism — while it’s also true that he did not fully adhere to any specific filmmaking style. Let’s say then that surrealism was as important as many other artistic trends he incorporated in his filmography.
One of the leading directors of the New Latin American Cinema, Ruiz was born in Chile in 1941 and had exhaustive experience in avant-garde theatre — he wrote about 100 plays — and worked in television as well. A loyal yet critical supporter of Salvador Allende’s government, he was forced to leave the country after the military coup of 1973. From then on, he lived in exile in Paris, a place that welcomed his views on narrative and aesthetics. Soon enough, Europe granted him support for many of his productions, which were also critically acclaimed.
By the time this unique poet of cinema died from a lung infection in 2011 aged 70 in Paris, he had made over 110 films, including fiction films, shorts, and documentaries, experimenting with 35mm, 16mm and video. His work was featured on European TV and movie theatres all over the world. One of his last films, the striking masterpiece Mysteries of Lisbon, was commercially released in Buenos Aires a few weeks ago with the critical acclaim it deserves.
You’ll learn about some of these facts in Rojo’s documentary and won’t know a thing about others. It’s pretty clear the she did not want to make a conventional and educational documentary so she doesn’t go for a full portrayal of Ruiz, eschews resorting to lengthy interviews with those who knew him and worked with him, uses very little archive footage where you can see Ruiz talking, and only shows a handful of photos of him. Moreover, her omnipresent voice over gives out little information and is instead a conveyance for her thoughts and feelings about Ruiz — a trick which doesn’t always work that well.
And while there’s nothing wrong with this, it should be said it’s not nearly enough to do justice to such a stimulating man. Because it so happens that Contre l’ignorance Fiction! lacks a central, strong idea to glue it together. You could say that a film on Ruiz — who, in his oeuvre, favoured digressions, scattered thoughts, fragments, and intertwining layers of reality — doesn’t have to have a central idea and a straight narrative.
Maybe so, but the point is that Ruiz’s films still have a strong dramatic focus conveyed through his themes and set of aesthetics. And the notions and sensations stemming out of them leave a powerful impression on viewers. Whether you like his works or not, there’s no way you can be indifferent to them.
But the same cannot be said about Rojo’s documentary. The snippets of interviews featured are inserted out of context, and since the film lacks a dramatic core these interviews could be virtually placed anywhere. Plus they don’t address the many meanings and ramifications of the notions they only convey. So these fragments end up being anecdotic pieces that only scratch the surface of things. The way fragments are used here doesn’t render a thought-provoking array of ideas: it’s digressive in a bad way.
As minor achievements, you first have the effective interplay between some of Ruiz’s ideas as voiced out by himself and his friends with selected sequences from some of his films. It’s interesting to see how in Ruiz’s universe art imitates life — or life imitates art, for that matter. Some reflections upon what being an exile is and about Ruiz’s methods for making films are also relevant as to try to define, even if inconclusively, who Raúl Ruiz was.
Not surprisingly, the scenes of Ruiz’s movies featured make up the most appealing part of the documentary. But the truth is, you already have the movies themselves. You don’t need a middle-of-the-road documentary.
Production notes
Contre l’ignorance Fiction! (2016) Directed by Alejandra Rojo. With Jorge Arraigada, Paulo Branco, Ricardo Pereira, Melvile Poupaud, Waldo Rojas, Raúl Ruiz (archive footage) Editing: Jérome Colin, Isabelle Puodevigne. Running time: 63 minutes.
When and where
Centro Cultural San Martín (Sarmiento 1551, www.elculturalsanmartin.org). From Thursday to Sunday throughout July (except July 8 and 9), at 8pm. Tickets at 40 pesos and 25 pesos (students and seniors) available at the venue and on www.tuentrada.com.
