It took a couple months for us to be invited out by locals. Real, non-expat locals! Who spoke about as much English as we spoke Spanish. The activity would be a classic movie screening at the Museum of Latin American Art. The film: Paris, Texas, starring Harry Dean Stanton and Spanish subtitles. (It was good, but slooow.) That ended up being the first movie we saw in theaters since moving here. Never would've guessed.
The second was Interstellar, this time at a Cinemark like any other. We didn't choose it out of nostalgia for the English language; how could we when the other choices were The Hobbit 3, The Hunger Games 3 Part 1, and Dumb and Dumber 2? I don't mean to rip on sequels, that's actually an accurate representation of the selection. The point is, it really was a Cinemark like any other.
Later on, we went out with another couple of locals, and we started talking about movies. They mentioned they had seen Interstellar, too, along with other familiar names like Horrible Bosses 2 (there really are a lot of sequels, aren't there?). It was only then that I started to think about the ubiquity of American (i.e. U.S., English-language) media that I had taken for granted. The Simpsons seem to sponsor more merchandise here than in their home country. Kids tote around action figures of Woody from Toy Story. Alf is bizarrely still alive and well. The signs are subtle, but they are definitely there.
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| Something strange in your neighborhood. |
Movies and television become a vehicle by which American culture permeates the world. It's weird to imagine subtitles as the default. It's humbling, and embarrassing, to realize that the world knows a lot more about American culture than Americans do about the world's. They are shared experiences, which are good things, but it seems uneven when almost all of them come from Hollywood studios.
So, especially while we're here, we owe it to Argentina and ourselves to return the favor. Our timing was fortunate: we had been hearing a lot about a new Argentine movie called Relatos Salvajes. Every local who mentioned it said it was excellent and perfectly conveyed Argentine culture. Advertisements proudly announced its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film (which by itself says a lot about English-language dominance). There was only one detail that delayed our viewing it—movies in Spanish in a Spanish-speaking country don't have subtitles. But eventually, our Spanish and our confidence improved, and we went to see it.
Relatos Salvajes is masterful, hilarious, starkly original cinema. It is comprised of six short stories, independent from each other but under the broad themes of revenge and, of course, Argentine culture. The opening shots are gripping; the score is catchy; the humor is potent and very dark. It's not a great Argentine movie—it's just a great movie, no qualifiers necessary. It stands up to the best of American cinema, to say nothing of how it stands up to the average of American cinema.
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| A tale of two cinemas. |
It's funny because both of the above movies have taglines about "losing control," but I can assure you, without having read or seen 50 Shades of Grey, that is where the similarities end.
All of the Argentine movies we have seen so far have been thoroughly enjoyable, and I'd recommend them to anyone. El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) tells an engrossing story that I don't know whether to call a crime drama or a love story. Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens) is among the best of heist/caper films with too many twists to predict. ValentÃn follows an adorable 8-year-old boy as he tries to play matchmaker.
Relatos Salvajes will be released in U.S. theaters as Wild Tales starting February 20. It's definitely worth watching, and it will be subtitled.