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| Fernando Morena and Eliu Armas star in Hermano. |
When was the last time you saw a movie you knew nothing about?
It's a trickier thing to accomplish than it might seem to be. After all, if a film comes from a director whose work you've ever seen, you know something about it. If it stars an actor you've ever seen or ever read about – someone with any kind of a reputation, good or bad – you know something about it. If you've seen a trailer or an ad on TV, of course, then you know a lot about it. If it's "from the people who brought you," or "the director of," you're specifically being told what to expect, even if falsely. More often than not, the biggest concern about a film before it's made available is that if you don't know anything about it, you won't go...
I saw a Venezuelan film called Hermano this weekend. Here's what I knew about it before I saw it: It was a drama, it had something to do with soccer and, in keeping with the title, it had something to do with brothers. That's it. That's it. Never heard of the director, Marcel Rasquin (it's his first film), never heard of or seen any of the actors ever before (they're quite new, too), didn't know whether it was tragic or uplifting or gritty or sunny or what. I knew it won awards at film festivals in Moscow and Havana, and ... that's all...
Everything you know something about when you go is, intentionally or unintentionally, coded. The director, the actor, the type of film, everything sends a message, even if it's not the most obvious one. One example: I watched Buried the other night, the claustrophobic thriller starring Ryan Reynolds, and one of the things I found myself musing on was Reynolds' decision to take a role where his looks would be as useless as possible. In a way, it detaches him from his reputation as a pretty boy. But the fact remains: He's Ryan Reynolds. I've seen him before, quite a lot, so knowing it's him means that coding is there for me, even when he's in the dark...
It's good now and then, though, to see something where, for you, there's absolutely no coding in it at all. Obviously, the marketing of a movie often sends unmistakable signals about where it's going and who the good and bad guys are before you ever get there. A story of a good and a bad brother, for instance, will tell you who's who in the commercials. Even if you don't get it from the commercials, there's a decent chance you'll get it from the casting. You'll get it from the way the two are shot from the opening sequence forward. You'll get it from the score.
When you don't know anything – what tradition the film is in, what its genre is, how it would be marketed, or who the target audience is – not only do you see that film differently, but you see other films differently, too. The lack of signals is palpable and initially unsettling because the experience is so rare, but like any negative space, it draws a kind of attention to itself. It made me think about the avalanche of coding attached to a movie like Moneyball: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Aaron Sorkin, baseball, Michael Lewis, Michael Lewis' book ... there are a hundred ways to be either with or against that film before you watch a frame of it...
There was a discussion after Hermano in which something remarkable happened: Multiple people in the room took the position that the film's ending either was "ambiguous" in a way I believe it wasn't, or, in some cases, took the fairly firm position that it ended in a way I believe it clearly didn't. One of them said, in fact, that he believed the film was of a particular genre, he felt films in that genre should end in a specific way, and therefore, he chose to believe that was the way Hermano ended, even though – again, in my opinion – he was unquestionablychanging the ending that was on the screen...
It was an enormously valuable experience, precisely because I can't say for sure who was right. (It was me, though.) (I'm just sure of it.) The movie was just out there, on its own, on the screen, no hints. No codes, no semaphore, no homages to anyone. Here's a movie; see what you think. It's an experience to try to have regularly, because it's really the only way to make sure you're still noticing everything you carry with you into the average multiplex picture.
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