“The land is family…if you betray your family, the land will curse you.” Greed destroys everything. It takes your friends. Your loved ones. Your soul. It takes, and takes, and takes, until life becomes a barren wasteland, empty but for the dust clouds swirling over the scorched earth of your existence. And in writer/director F. Javier Gutierrez’s The Wait, which just played at Fantastic Fest, greed is the catalyst for one man’s dark descent into the cost of that all-consuming but all too human trait. Set on a rural farm in Spain surrounded by nothing but dirt and mountains, we meet Eladio (Victor Clavijo), who has been hired to watch over the hunting grounds of Don Francisco (Pedro Casablanc). But when he is convinced to go against the order of Don Francisco and erect thirteen hunting stands instead of ten (better for avoiding accidents), with the promise of extra cash on the side, Eladio finds his family tormented by what may be a curse seeking retribution. Perhaps it’s just the waning heat of summer I’m feeling, but watching The Wait, you can sense the hot sun of the isolated setting burning overhead like the watchful eye of Hell. I assume that’s the intent, because Hell is exactly where our tortured protagonist finds himself in this grim tragedy. Every scene, every moment, crisps around the edges with the perception that a fiery inferno is closing in around Eladio, his wife, Marcia (Ruth Diaz) and their little boy. Sweat drips off the screen and wets your own skin. You can feel the dryness of the air. Taste the dust in your mouth. From the first moment to the last, Gutierrez instills in the audience the perception that his film is on a collision course towards what must be the inevitable once Eladio makes the choice to sacrifice his honor for money. Where it’s going is nowhere pleasant. Gutierrez’s film is one choked with tragedy and sprinkled with horror, perceived through a spell-binding performance from Clavijo that grabs hold from the very beginning and hangs on with a death grip. The Wait takes the face of humanity and peers deep through the eyes into the soul, which is perfect for Clavijo, because the actor carries with him an immense power in those eyes of his. They practically burn through the screen with the sun as we follow him down a steep decline into the darkest parts of ourselves, littered with the vicious voices that tell us we deserve what we get. Some may question whether or not Eladio, a seemingly good father and imperfect husband doing his best, deserves the events that befall his family once he makes the choice that he does, but Gutierrez’s intention isn’t as black and white as that. After all, most us would argue we don’t “deserve” the terrible things that happens to us. Most of us are also guilty of something, anyway. In this world, the punishment doesn’t always match the crime. As you can probably guess, The Wait is about as bleak as it gets. Told with a slow but never boring pace, it lets the audience into the grief that grinds away at Eladio. Much of the film acts as a painful exploration of the ways we are burdened by guilt, deserved or not. It’s easy to blame ourselves when something happens to the people we care most about. The sweltering heat and caked dirt of the film’s aesthetic pull the viewer into the isolation filling the hole where Eladio’s soul used to be. The moment tragedy strikes, it’s as if the earth opens up and swallows him whole, us with him. Being that The Wait plays aptly to its title, unfolding with all of the urgency of a tortoise baking in the sun, Gutierrez asks for a great deal of patience from the viewer on the way to a shocking conclusion. Sort of like guilt. It doesn’t punish us all at once, but rather takes its time, breaking us down into a mere shell of our former selves. Eladio experiences a similar breakdown in this dark drama blended with a sandstorm of nightmares, trapped between life and death, a man alive but not living. As for those nightmares, Gutierrez takes his time getting to the horror, forcing the audience to wonder if what Eladio eventually experiences comes from his mind or something more sinister. Here, the ghosts that he encounters on the frontier act as vessels of the subconscious, poking and prodding at the poor bastard’s emotional wounds. While these moments happen few and far between, most not occurring until an eerie third act, they illicit a spine-tingling dread, made all that more effective by phenomenal effects work. The make-up effects are so well-crafted, in fact, that it becomes a disappointment we don’t see more of them. One particular sequence pays homage to An American Werewolf in London that’s sure to drop jaws during it’s too-brief time on screen. Brutal. Thoughtful. Beautifully shot. The Wait spends more time molding the ball of Eladio’s grief than it does expanding on the more mysterious circumstances of the plot, resulting in some convoluted pieces and arbitrary rules that ultimately come off as unnecessary. But those willing to give the film the time it deserves may find themselves leaving with a coat of dust on their flesh and a look of unsettlement on their faces. A mix of psychological horror, curses that may or may not exist, and sinister secrets hiding within the land, I’m sorry for what I’m about to say, but I can’t help it…The Wait is worth the wait. By Matt Konopka
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
March 2023
|