maybe the best horny colonialist comedy since HOW TASTY WAS MY LITTLE FRENCHMAN.

like all Martel movies, i'm enjoying it a lot more after the fact. the last 30 minutes (and that llama) will stick with me for a long time, i'm sure. happy to leave it there for now.

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Put your stumps in the sand, bih

51/100

Perhaps the most damning thing I can say about Zama—a film I'd been eagerly anticipating for years—is that I spent much of it thinking not of Martel's previous work, but of John Sayles' worthy, lumbering Amigo. Apart from the llama photobomb (which may have been a happy accident to some degree, but I give directors credit for recognizing and retaining those), Martel stifles herself formally, adopting a deep-focus classicism that reinforces the inherent pitfalls of a movie about stasis. There's just precious little to engage the mind or the eye for much of the film—a standard-issue lit-adaptation problem (the book is reportedly Zama's interior monologue, and hilarious), but not a trap that I'd have expected this particular filmmaker to fall into. Gets livelier in the home stretch, thanks to a welcome change of scenery and the delayed appearance of the much-discussed villain, but I submit that when folks call Zama "difficult," what they really mean is "kinda dull."

Still utterly engrossed by this purgatorial satire that subtly shows how colonialism founded the modern, western middle class by priming present-day dissatisfaction and boredom with violently achieved power. In a world without Kiarostami, Martel may now be the finest living user of sound in film.

Misfortune reigns, this former government employee sympathizes. Why did this remind me of an episode of Arrested Development?

“Shove your stumps in the sand” absolutely sent me.

Gestión de proyectos #3.
— Festival de Venecia.

Importante reflexión sobre el futuro desde la vereda de la desolación. Cada cuadro de esta película está llena de vida, en el sentido de que todo momento puede retratar un pasado quizá obvio, pero no menos importante. El mérito mayor de Martel es su nivel de poder expresar su autoría a través de un realismo mágico que se plasma desde una expresión muy latinoamericana, dejando en claro que ella es una de las autoras contemporáneas a recordar cuando en un futuro nos preguntemos de las voces del continente a través del cine.

Oddly reminds me of Terrence Malick's "New World" and with a "Catch 22" (the book) vibe in there as well. Fascinating film, but not very rewatchable.

One of the brilliant start to storytelling I've ever seen:

[Inside-Interroagation scene-Boy starts to confess]
"There's a fish that spends its life swimming to and fro. Fighting water that seeks to cast it upon dry land. Beacuse the water rejects it. The water doesn't want it. These long-suffering fish, so attached to the element that repels them, devote all their energy to remaining in place. You'll never find them in the central part of the river, but always near the banks."
[Match-cut to Zama while standing near the banks]

A lo largo del viaje de Don Diego de Zama, la directora Lucrecia Martel no muestra una pictórica y trepidante américa del siglo XVII, donde cada plano parece un cuadro de la época. En cuanto a la historia de Don diego y sus esfuerzos para conseguir un traslado, a lo largo de la película vemos a Zama frustrado y perdido tanto en el espacio como en su memoria, al final como si descubriera que el mundo en el que vive lo rechazara.

well-framed horny colonialists

Zama is about a man stuck in colonial middle management.

He hilariously tries to claw his way out into a better life and be with his wife and child

Slow moving and weird, but not necessarily in a good way. Its a movie critics movie. I thought it would be similar to a Herzog film like Aguire Wrath of God, but way less powerful of a movie.