Aita (José María de Orbe, 2010)

[DDillaman]

Just saw this transcendent film, and it seems to be riding under the radar everywhere. Which is a shame.

The story is slight and basic: a caretaker looks over a decayed house/church, with occasional visits from the outside world. But this film isn't about story so much as the traces left in the space, especially as characterized by light and sound. Employing only fixed camera positions, AITA captures the movement of natural light through its empty spaces in a way that is somehow, mysteriously, magical. One reviewer described it as a "high-art take on a haunted house film" or somesuch, and while that's not wrong, per se, it evokes something very different to me than what is on offer here.

There's a stylistic intrusion of the past into the space that starts midway through and gradually takes up more screen time - I don't want to spoil it, but when the film first gave a flash of it, I got one of those tingly feelings of joy and delight that happens all too rarely for me these days.

To call it slow is to imply it's heading somewhere. AITA is nothing more or less than a monument: stately, magisterial, and indifferent to most traditional cinematic concerns. But if your nervous system is attuned to it, you may fall in love.

[John Edmond]

Rosenbaum's Mexico City Film Festival jury notes regarding Aita. It won best film.

Daniel Kasman interviews de Orbe.

Nothing else to say but, I want to see it.

[zedz]

Yes, indeed. A really lovely film, and another recent one (like The Turin Horse, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and, less successfully, The Tree of Life) that gets a huge amount of mileage just through exploring the way particular kinds of light work on screen.

Those 'intrusions' are quite sublime, but even more sublime are those quiet scenes where the old guy slowly opens up windows off-screen, gradually delineating deep space through stray beams, carving the mise-en-scene out of darkness. It's a very self-effacing masterpiece, and I don't expect it will get a high profile English language release, so you may have to track it to its festival circuit lair.

[rohmerin]

First news there's this film that apparently only critics has seen.

Trailer. http://www.elblogdecineespanol.com/?p=3034" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Question: Is it in Basque language or Spanish?

[Oedipax]

Looks lovely. I hope I can see it some day. I feel that way about far too many films lately.

[zedz]

The trailer does give a faint trace of the film's visual beauty (if you can mentally unsquish the images!), but otherwise that Powerpoint editing doesn't give a very good sense of the film's pace and tone.

[DDillaman]

zedz - I love the matching later shots to those opening window shots, where the closing takes place off screen, gradually transforming details of the building that look like abstract paintings to black.

Ha. I suppose in this movie, that almost counts as a spoiler.

Your TREE OF LIFE comparison is apposite - it's stunning how much more this film says about light despite its vastly circumscribed scope, budget, tools, etc. THE TURIN HORSE is also a spiritual counterpart, but perhaps its doggedly anti-transcendental counterpart. ANATOLIA, apart from its nice uses of light, I don't really see the comparison with, but maybe I'm missing something basic.

(And one of these film festivals, I'm confident, we'll bump into each other.)

Rohmerin - not 100% sure - I think Catalan, only insofar as I know a small amount of Spanish and my ear never twigged on anything during the film.

[rohmerin]

Aita is a Basque word, meaning father, it's impossible to be spoken in Catalan. According to piracy guys (see bottom link) it's in Castillian when they talk to the priest, and in Basque (Vasco) the rest. Funny, I've never seen a Basque language ever and I live 3 hours by car from Basque Country (gorgeous land).

I've found this about the press conference.

Funny, it's not a 35mm film, non actors, it's made for being proyected on walls. Everything sound very TATE or MOMA, I'm intrigued.

El director José María de Orbe comenzó a trabajar en la película «Aita» en 2008.
El filme ha sido rodado con actores no profesionales y sin guión previo. Orbe, quien siente una gran admiración por el pintor Mark Rothko y el escultor Jorge Oteiza, rodó «Aita» en una casa abandonada propiedad de su familia.
Los personajes que aparecen en «Aita» son reales. Así el párroco o el guarda ejercen su profesión en el pueblo de Astigarraga, donde José María de Orbe ha grabado una película que además es un tributo al primer cine rodado en el País Vasco

[DDillaman]

What I get for typing when tired - how I transposed Catalan for Basque in my head, I have no idea.

I had no idea it wasn't 35mm until reading up on it (it was shown on a 35mm print, and looked gorgeous). But despite the more artsy elements of it, it doesn't play (to me) as an "art installation" film - I never thought of TATE or MOMA when I was watching.

[zedz]

ANATOLIA, apart from its nice uses of light, I don't really see the comparison with, but maybe I'm missing something basic.

I don't think so. It's a very different film from the others, especially since, at the level of dramatic action and character it's not trying to be 'transcendent' or anything, but visually it has that same intensive exploration of what can be done with a particular kind of light. In the first (and best) hour, you could see it as a visual essay on what can be done with only car headlights. And in that section it shares with Turin Horse and Aita that sense of carving the cinematic space out of darkness, where you don't just see scenes lit from a minimal source, but you observe shifts in the location and intensity of that source and how they change your understanding of the environment.

(And one of these film festivals, I'm confident, we'll bump into each other.)

Maybe we need to practice that criterionforum secret handshake.

[zedz]

Funny, it's not a 35mm film, non actors, it's made for being proyected on walls.

That's very interesting, particularly when you factor in that

Spoiler

there are passages within the film of (degraded) film imagery being projected onto walls, which would presumably create a kind of receding frame within a frame effect.

[DDillaman]

zedz, dunno if you saw CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, but it also can be added to the list of films that get mileage from the motion of light on screen. (Didn't care for it in general, but topical!)

[rohmerin]

According to this store the 2 discs + 100 pages booklet has got English subtitles. On disc 2 there's a 50 minutes alternative Aita version.

Congratulations, Amazon Spain has born but they don't have Aita (yet). Complain.

Mail of Karma films if you want to ask if it is really a English friendly or ask how much is the delivery.

[email protected]