ROJO (2018) Dir Benjamin Naishtat

“Sometime people participate by taking action but sometimes they act through omission.” Set in Argentina during the 1970s and early 1980s, this psychological thriller questions another dark side of the period of military dictatorship, or ‘dirty war’ conflict: What did the ordinary man do?

by Corina J Poore

Darío Grandinetti as Claudio and Diego Cremonesi as Dieguito (The Hippie).

A powerful opening sequence sets the story in motion. Claudio Morán, a prosperous local lawyer of some standing in the community of a small provincial town, is profoundly upset at being obliged to give up his table in a restaurant and being made to wait for his wife Susana (Andrea Frigerio) who has been delayed, by standing awkwardly by the bar, while the troubled man who caused the problem sits to eat. Annoyed, the lawyer humiliates the disturbed man (Diego Cremonesi) telling him in front of everyone how much he pities him for being a miserable soul with no manners: “you desperately watch as you see how others are able to live in harmony…” The man leaps up and starts shouting at everyone accusing them of being Nazis and is ejected from the premises.

This leads to a later drastic confrontation that is key to the development of the story. For fans of CSI and crime thrillers, it is hard to understand, at first, how Claudio reacts, disposing of the man in a ruthless manner and at the same time implicating himself, even going as far as keeping the incriminating evidence.

But as the director Benjamin Naishtat explains:-

“Claudio is a character who is prominent in his community and who doesn’t want his honour to be sullied or have his name associated with strange things. So that is why, as a sort of short- cut, he decides, with a miserable attitude, to abandon this poor man. Simply because he could, because he has the impunity to do so… with an attitude that is characteristic of the time, to do something, simply because you can….This is not a real place, the town is invented… ‘they are finding bodies in the desert’, the desert functions as a metaphor that swallows people… there is the magician and various symbolic moments where there are clear references to what is happening, even as a nod to the audience…so that through these metaphors, they are able to understand what was taking place.”

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This film has novel way of facing this 'Dirty War' troubled period in Argentina’s history of the 70s. Many films have been made of those difficult years, but Naishtat wanted to examine it from a different angle, rather than concentrate yet again on the militancy and the repression, he chose to : -

“ [to explore] the experience of the ‘civil society’, as people generally refer to the ‘ ordinary man’, during this particularly traumatic period, a time that still resonates in the collective imagination of the people, in the problems that they still have… in order to understand their political position with respect to what took place…. That silent complicity that created the necessary conditions for the cultural and social events that took place in Argentina at that time… whether he is guilty or not, he who remains in his home, and did nothing while people were disappearing, and in this film, our premise is that this is what happened… there is the responsibility that emerges from omission, of ‘not doing’ anything. Sometimes the only way to be truly innocent is to act… this is the hypothesis behind our film and it has generated a number of [strong] reactions!”

Darío Grandinetti & Claudio Martínez Bel as caludio & Vivas .jpg

Darío Grandinetti and Claudio Martínez Bel

ROJO has many references on different levels to corruption and violence, even if not always of a physical type. Only a few months after the incident with the man in the restaurant, Claudio enters deeper waters as he uses his work contacts to appropriate an abandoned building illegally with a friend, an act that is seen by them as acceptable. Even to the degree of manipulating a young victim who had sought advice from the lawyer over a redundancy case. The fancy modern house has already been quietly stripped of everything except the nails on the walls by a stream of neighbours who surreptitiously enter from time to time and emerge with goods. Is the evil outside or is it the beast within?

Impunity is the order of the day, even some young delinquents ‘disappear’ a young musician because of a small dispute. At the same time, a reference is made to American involvement on a subtle level by introducing some ‘rodeo’ cowboys, who are treated like royalty while they show off castrating steers… even they are briefly incarcerated, and a sense of oppression takes over.

The director’s choice of Brazilian cinematographer Pedro Sotero was the result of a very precise analysis of Sotero’s previous work. Naishtat was impressed with Sotero's cinematography on Kleber Mendonça’s ‘Aquarius’ (with Sonia Braga) and ‘Neighbouring Sounds’, as well as Sotero's fine work on ‘Gabriel y La Montaña’ (Gabriel and the Mountain) which was filmed in Africa: -

“We connected because we’re both fans of 1970s cinema. We enjoy the same type of films and so we worked together to construct the language of the film which was a very rich collaboration, full of powerful encounters.”

Andrea Frigerio, Alfredo Castro as Det. Sinclair and Darío Grandinetti.jpg

Andrea Frigerio, Alfredo Castro (as Det. Sinclair) and Darío Grandinetti

With images as well as carefully judged sound and music (Vincent van Warmerdam), in ROJO, Benjamin Naishtat successfully captures the sensations of living under an oppressive regime, where a simple question of: “What is your name” becomes ominous. The feeling of claustrophobia is gradually accelerated, politically, as in throw- away comments and talk about a ‘coup’ and ‘events’ in Buenos Aires, as well as by the unwanted presence of a sharp ‘Chilean’ Private Investigator and ex- cop (the superbly creepy Alfredo Castro) called in to find out what happened to the first missing man, who has turned out to be a relative of a close friend of Claudio.

“The journey for the spectator becomes very interesting when he realizes that he might have done the same thing, like abandon a wounded man in the desert, or take over an abandoned house… even if he only begin to ‘question’ whether he might have done the same thing… then I know the film is working.”

Claudio’s life finally starts to feel as if he is held in a stranglehold, as does the whole country.

Naishtat is currently working on what many might consider an impossible project. An adaptation of LOS SIETE LOCOS (The Seven Madmen) by Roberto Arlt. This is an expressionistic and existential novel from 1929, and Naishtat’s idea is to make it relevant today. It develops some of the problems proposed by existential philosophy and is in a sense, very abstract.

Not one to be phased by difficulties, Naishtat has always veered towards political themes and psychological thrillers, as seen in his earlier productions “El Movimiento” (The Movement) and “Historia del Miedo” (The History of Fear): -

“At some point, I would like to film a romantic comedy… but this is what ends up emerging from me! I always end up with these dense themes and I don’t really know why… I always have an historical element going around, although I like the idea of getting into psychological thriller territory because it’s very popular and touches a nerve with people so they all want to see it , as it’s a big part of the collective imagination, so I feel more comfortable working within these genre conventions, as an effective vehicle to talk about a time and its history.”

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