Los Muertos is a contemplative and controlled film about men in their environment. The film is incredibly understated, but never boring, in that it is always moving. The lead character, Vargas, is simply moving towards where he wants to go, first to deliver a letter one of the inmates left behind gives him for his daughter, then to find his own grown daughter.
The poetry and grace in the storytelling is in simply watching this man, who has very little interactions with other humans, move forward. He is a man of little words, and of deliberate (and sometimes startling) action. The jungle is a powerful metaphor, of course, as is the river he travels in a small boat. The details of his journey are compelling and almost hypnotic - his smoking-out of a hive to get honeycomb, his sudden grabbing of a goat on the shore to kill it (my, I wish I had been warned of this scene - it happens in one cut and is not faked), etc.
An elliptical comment early on, in which a man cleaning a fish asks if he really killed his brothers, is answered by Vargas, "I don't remember all that anymore." That's about the extent of the backstory, and the film allows you to consider this man's place and if he can ever find what he's going towards. Less is more in this case, and the film-making ends up being powerful, and evoking Anonioni or Dreyer in its confidence that showing a person in his/her surroundings is sometimes drama enough.
The poetry and grace in the storytelling is in simply watching this man, who has very little interactions with other humans, move forward. He is a man of little words, and of deliberate (and sometimes startling) action. The jungle is a powerful metaphor, of course, as is the river he travels in a small boat. The details of his journey are compelling and almost hypnotic - his smoking-out of a hive to get honeycomb, his sudden grabbing of a goat on the shore to kill it (my, I wish I had been warned of this scene - it happens in one cut and is not faked), etc.
An elliptical comment early on, in which a man cleaning a fish asks if he really killed his brothers, is answered by Vargas, "I don't remember all that anymore." That's about the extent of the backstory, and the film allows you to consider this man's place and if he can ever find what he's going towards. Less is more in this case, and the film-making ends up being powerful, and evoking Anonioni or Dreyer in its confidence that showing a person in his/her surroundings is sometimes drama enough.