Lisandro Alonso – Gaps of Film Realism

Rafał Syska

Abstract

The author of this essay focuses on the films directed by Argentinean filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (La Libertad, Los Muertos, Fantasma and Liverpool). The article examines the specific film style, focusing on various forms of the cinematic realism. Firstly, the essay proposes the list of the Alonso’s potential protoplasts, confronts the Argentinean filmmaker with the film poetics conceived by Robert Bresson, Bela Tarr and Chantal Akerman. The author claims that the Alonso’s conception Updates Bressonian idea of “cinematography”, although Argentinean director rejects the process of semiotic synthesis, instead proposing the uniqueness of the characters, the purest realism - ancillary to the landscape and the actor. Besides, Syska describes the distancing techniques used by Alonso, ellipsis in the film plot, the avoidance of the punchlines and the specific nature of the subjectivity located inside the classical objective narration (e.g. the analysis of a sleep scene from the movie La Libertad). The author also analyzes the temporal relations in Alonso’s films - using the term called “present tense progressive”.