Zama (Lucrecia Martel)

[Stay Puft]

ZAMA
Dir. Lucrecia Martel



IMDb page

[Stay Puft]

I remember finding this to be sprawling and fascinating, but also a little exhausting. It feels overlong and repetitive towards the end, and I remember being particularly annoyed with a subplot about an investigation into a scribe's book, which pushed the limit of how many bureaucratic roadblocks my patience could withstand in Zama's journey. But the ending itself is appropriately disorienting and nightmarish, and I loved the closing sequence of shots. Martel's formal mastery is on full display throughout. I love how she frames her subjects, and captures the (in)action of these colonial outposts.

The part that I obsessed with the most, afterwards, was the llama. I remember spending the rest of TIFF talking about this with people. A llama crashes the set during a pivotal dramatic scene, basically photobombing the film, and the way it moves through the frame and seemingly taunts Zama dovetails perfectly with the scene, emotionally and thematically. It was, hands down, my favorite movie moment from 2017.

[Peng]

The film's story of colonial purgatory is intentionally in limbo, which leads to trying stretches at times, and more admiration than full love at first, despite touches of the haunting (and dryly deadpan) surreal. But they accumulate along with desperate turmoil seen in the lead's eyes, veiled under his increasingly unsuccessful indignation. And the last half hour is downright mysterious and transporting, in its elliptical vision of that purgatory made explicitly external into a gorgeous fever nightmare. That slight smile in the penultimate shot, amidst the breathtaking, moving green algae, will stay with me for quite some time. 7.5/10