Glory and Gore in “Afternoons of Solitude”

You don’t person to similar bullfighting to ticker “Afternoons of Solitude” with fascination, immoderate much than you person to similar transgression to bask a movie noir. Full disclosure: I squeamishly ticker fearfulness films done my fingers and, successful existent life, a specified punch successful the chemoreceptor is terrifying to witness. I uncertainty I’d ever be a corrida—but this caller documentary by Albert Serra, astir the bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey, is 1 of the astir transfixing I’ve seen successful a while. There’s blood, and it’s not signifier blood; Roca gets hurt, and bulls are killed. Yet the effect that the movie elicits isn’t fearfulness but glory. What makes “Afternoons of Solitude” hard to ticker is its battle connected assumptions: possibly justness would beryllium served by the abolition of bullfighting, but Serra proves that, were it to vanish, a root of extremist quality would beryllium lost, too.

Serra’s daringly restrained attack to the taxable is astatine the precise root of the film’s disturbing affectional power. There are nary talking-head interviews, nary voice-overs, nary superimposed substance oregon rubric cards to situate the action. What’s more, there’s an bonzer austerity to its spectrum of activity, which involves lone 3 kinds of settings: the van successful which Roca and his squad of astir a half-dozen men question from venue to venue, the hotels successful which Roca stays, and the rings successful which helium fights bulls. Roca is onscreen for astir the full film, yet it takes a portion to spot him successful action, due to the fact that Serra, who followed him implicit the people of a twelvemonth and a half, makes the shrewd editorial prime of preparing viewers for a bullfight arsenic Roca himself prepares. First, he’s seen successful a van conscionable aft a bout, calmly chatting with his unit portion inactive wearing his ornate competitory finery (known arsenic the traje de luces, the “suit of lights”). But the evident calm of the travel soon proves to beryllium softly fraught: aft arriving successful a edifice room, wherever an adjunct helps region the skintight suit, Roca is inactive bleeding from an unhealed wound. At each turn, “Afternoons of Solitude” is simply a play of blood.

Once Roca is successful the ring, Serra’s method turns rigorously and prudently observational. The manager and his camera operators (he mostly shoots utilizing 3 cameras) are usually determination successful the assemblage alongside mean summons holders (and occasionally connected platforms utilized for TV broadcasts), and Roca is chiefly filmed from afar, with zoom lenses that paradoxically amusement him and the bulls successful utmost item portion nevertheless evoking utmost region from the action. Nothing successful the movie suggests that the operators themselves are successful the ringing and physically dodging danger. The images person a poise, a calm, a precision that, from the contemplative information of the stands, is each the much passionately attentive to the information that Roca, his team, and, for that matter, the bulls confront. The takes often tally precise long; the resulting continuities of abstraction and clip unfold the choreographic splendor of the bullfighter’s enactment and convey a harrowing consciousness of nary exit from the tract of battle.

The archetypal corrida successful the movie condenses its galore segments into a bravura series of a twelve minutes: some an overview of the accustomed bid of concern and a enactment of premier moments from a theatre of death. First, Roca calls, taunts, and dodges the bull arsenic a picador lances its back; the wounded bull leaves humor connected the horse’s protective broad and the rider’s metallic footbox. A banderillero enters the ringing connected ft and runs daringly adjacent to the bull, planting barbed sticks successful its enarthrosis earlier deftly dashing away. Then, with the bull bleeding and weakened, Roca bears his sword beneath his cape and executes adjacent passes, turning his backmost connected the animal, wiggling his hips, shaking his caput cockily, and goading it with a outcry of “Toro, toro!,” lone to beryllium knocked level and astir trampled by the enraged beast. Spoiler: Roca gets up, shakes it off, and, to the audience’s rhythmic chants of “To-re-ro, to-re-ro!,” returns to the fray. Moments later, aft asking an subordinate successful the stands,“You deliberation we unopen their mouths?,” Roca returns to instrumentality connected different bull.

The soundtrack adds to the consciousness of haunted drama: members of Roca’s squad deterioration tiny vigor microphones, picking up their voices—whether sermon oregon cries—and that of the bullfighter himself, who refused to deterioration a mike, and who battles to the emergence and autumn of the crowd’s gasps and cheers. The connection with which his entourage exhorts him has a Hemingwayesque prime of terse grandiloquence: 1 calls retired to Roca that he’s connected “the beforehand lines of the soul.” (The dialog besides reaches a spot little connected the philosophical scale, with its predominant testicular references—“Life is nothing, you’ve got balls”—and likewise macho exclamations, arsenic erstwhile a squad subordinate tells Roca, “Go footwear ass, maestro, spell with the greats.”)

The effect is practically martial. Roca is simply a antheral astatine war, and adjacent erstwhile helium wins, helium benignant of loses. In 1 bout, he’s archetypal flipped to the crushed and prodded by the bull, past slammed into the ringside boards, lone hardly spared a horrific goring by getting pounded by the bull’s caput chiefly between the horns. Roca—with his pants torn and humor showing through—returns to combat and yet brings the bull down with 1 fierce thrust, leaving the sword successful its back. An aggravated and relieved teammate taunts the vanquished animal, “Go articulation your fucking parent cow.” Roca’s response, however, is astir a eulogy: “Bull, you spared me.” Serra is respectful, too. The camera operators drawback the animals successful afloat and furious closeups, and they wage dignified attraction to bulls’ decease agonies, their thrusts and their tremors, their gazes misting over, their eyes rolling backmost successful their heads—and to the banal past rites of the corpses, chained to the horses that resistance them off.