TIFF '23: Shadows of Our Violent Past

by Cláudio Alves

Examining troubled history through art can be a necessary confrontation, even a search for catharsis. You can't move into a brighter future without acknowledging the shadows lurking in the past. It's no wonder, then, that countless filmmakers use their skills to make these excavations on the dig site of the screen. For all that Shinya Tsukamoto's Shadow of Fire and Felipe Gálvez Haberle's The Settlers tackle their respective countries' histories, they're not traditional period pieces content to passively restage yesteryears. They bear the weight of an artist's singular vision…

SHADOW OF FIRE, Shinya Tsukamoto
According to director Tsukamoto, seeing the world take a step back from peace, he felt compelled to make movies like Shadow of Fire, cinematic prayers for the sake of us all. This is not the first of such exercises for the maverick filmmaker (best known for the Tetsuo body horror trilogy) who in recent years has been looking back at Japan's history of violence.

Shadow of Fire is neatly split into two main passages with an epilogue, perfect to send the audience out of the theater choking on sorrow. The first portion is set exclusively inside the remains of a ramen house turned makeshift home. Inside a young woman takes refuge, earning what little funds she has by selling her body by daylight. At night, a strange dynamic develops between her and two other lost souls wandering through Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II. One is a starving soldier unmoored now that the fighting is over. The other is just a boy, alone, his family presumed victim to the fire-bombings that left those scorch marks the camera loves to contemplate on the walls.

"Shadows of Fire"

The story's first half is a chamber drama, confined and shot with claustrophobic intent. Beautiful lighting paints waves of changing color to denote the passage of time. The set design is rich with mildew and burnt paper, the material burden of tragedy and ruin. If the spaces bear visible scars, the improvised family of three keeps them somewhat at bay. Only in sleep, do they feel the shock of remembrance. Night terrors are full-bodied experiences in Shadow of Fire, played with convulsing conviction, muscles seized, drool dribbling down, sweat all over.

In these conditions, the possibility of familial idyll soon ceases to be. Woman and boy, who is more concept than character, remain attached in a pseudo-maternal bond, holding on to each other as a lifeline. But nothing could be so simple as that in this shadowy cosmos. A severing will happen, the boy leaving the confines of the ramen shop for a second chapter defined by countryside revenge. While the critique on Japanese militarism howls with rage in the second half, it's less captivating than what came before. That's always the danger of strict divisions of narrative -- they risk compartmentalization and comparison. It's easy to imagine a smoother version where this was two separate films instead of a too-short story cleaved in half, connected by a shared character. Regardless, the final effect is worth your time, flaws and all. Tsukamoto remains a master visual stylist, rendering a vision of historical Japan as a ghost world with its people waiting for salvation or maybe just the mercy of death.

THE SETTLERS, Felipe Gálvez Haberle
CHILE'S OSCAR SUBMISSION

Revisionist Westerns aren't new. Even if you go back to the New Hollywood vanguards of the 1960s you'd be missing their genesis by a couple of decades, if not more. The most American of all film genres has been re-contextualized almost from the start to question its foundations.Felipe Gálvez Haberle's debut feature is a Chilean offspring from this cinematic lineage, presenting a haunting vision of national myth vivisected.

The first thing you notice about The Settlers is its remarkable look. For all intents and purposes, Haberle and DP Simone d'Arcangelo are playing at photographic necromancy, breathing life into dead imagery. The feel of the frame is that of an old color photograph, restored to legibility but with its saturated hues still speaking of archaic technology. It's ravishing, jettisoning the Chilean landscape to a barbaric past where much of its wilderness remained untamed. Even the sky roars with hostility, claiming its freedom against those who wish to dispel grey storm clouds for sunniness.

"The Settlers" - Chile's Oscar Submission

Experiencing this Patagonia-set book of Genesis is to witness how the titular settlers dehumanized the indigenous population and then slaughtered them, genocide in the name of civilization and purported progress. Spanish landowner José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro) charges three horsemen with this evil mission at the turn of the century. They shall ride to the edges of his gigantic land, kill each and every Native they find, and claim the property that the state afforded him from these 'primitive trespassers'.

Neither the Scottish military expat (Mark Stanley) nor the American mercenary (Benjamin Westfall) he hires have qualms about their bloody duty. Indeed, they look like cowboy iconography stripped of nostalgia to reveal the white devils beneath. The same can't be said of the third member of the murder party, a mixed-race Chilean (Camilo Arancibia) who is afforded some recognition of human rights because of those pesky hints of whiteness in his parentage. He's our saturnine guide into the bloodbath, trying to avoid direct action while saving his neck from retribution. From a fog-covered massacre to a bizarre encounter with more expats from the other side of the Atlantic, the first movement of The Settlers is pure horror sublimated through historical trappings.

Then, as  in Shadow of Fire, a severing occurs. The narrative jumps several years, replacing killers who take life with their hands with killers who do it through covert policy, violence disguised as the business of diplomats and bureaucrats. If possible, The Settlers sinks deeper into the darkness, with Alfredo Castro's performance as Menéndez reaching vampiric proportions. You sense he'll devour you if given the chance. The movie is an unsettling watch, tough to endure but rewarding if you persevere. The final shot is a thing of beauty, too, with the poison of colonialism about to be spit out right at the viewer's face when the screen cuts to black. Call it revisionist Western if you want, or just call it what it is – a Western that tells the truth. 

The Settlers will be released internationally by MUBI. It's also Chile's official submission for the 96th Academy Awards.