Alamar

Pedro González-Rubio – 2009 – Mexico

The title means ‘to sea.’  Save for the fact that it was apparently all filmed by a two-person crew, I know nothing about the background of this film, nor its maker; all I know is that I was mesmerized from beginning to end.  I see it as the rare antidote to not only cumbersome mainstream movies but the pretentiousness of art films too, and that is something for which I  am always thirsting and seldom find.  It is a film that was clearly made for love – love of film, love of people and love of nature – as opposed to a targeted demographic.  Evidently playing himself, or rather a version of himself, Jorge Machado welcomes his son Natan, (visiting from Rome where he lives with his mother), to the Banco Chinchorro, a gorgeous reef near Belize, where he works as a crab fisherman with his own father (or at least an intimate father-figure).  There are no phones, TVs or video games; there is only the immensity of the ocean for the young child to absorb.  Jorge takes Natan with him on fishing excursions, teaching him about the business as much as about the wildlife they encounter; culminating in a magical scene in which Jorge coaches a wild heron into their hut on the water and gets it to accept food from his and Natan’s hands.  It’s a film about the regenerative power of nature as well as about fatherhood.  In a prologue we learn about Jorge and his ex-wife’s separation, and after that it is a completely male world we see, as Jorge savors the time spent with his son and as Natan learns about the world around him.  Without music, drama or special effects, the film as about as minimal as can be, but instead of being tedious it is tranquil and calming; beautifully recreating the sensation of actually being in the environment.  This is the first time that I felt that a filmmaker may actually be picking up where Jack Hazan left off.  Hazan’s only two features – A Bigger Splash (1974) and Rude Boy (1980) – suggested a whole new genre in which real people and situations are rendered quasi-fictional by the filmmaker’s manipulation of image and sequence to create a reality that would not have existed otherwise.  I’m very anxious to see anything else that Pedro González-Rubio makes.