In the final scene of Sohrab Shahid Saless’ 1974 masterpiece Still Life, an old man and his wife reluctantly leave the tiny, barren house they’ve shared for the better part of their lives, here they existed quietly and mostly forgotten in a small Iranian village. The old man regards himself in the mirror, considering his reflection for the first time in years. He’s become old. So many years have passed by, and yet life wasn’t moving at all. His identity is instead tied up in his home and the possessions in it, the small mementos that form the story of his uneventful, and yet lived, life. Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama, which owes a heavy debt to Saless’ film, takes a similar focus, shining a gentle spotlight on the lives of an elderly couple living at the edge of nowhere in the rural Bolivian highlands, a region almost entirely forgotten except for the few that remain. There’s nothing left, no reason for them to stay there, and yet who could ask them to leave? To what end? It’s their home.
Utama, which translates in English to “Our Home,” is Bolivia’s official submission for the 2023 Academy Awards. It’s also the feature directorial debut of Grisi, who first made his name as a documentary photographer. Grisi’s eye for composition plays an important role in Utama’s story, as much of the narrative is told through small gestures and environmental details rather than dialogue. What words the characters share are simple and straightforward. So is the story. An elderly Quechua couple, Virginio (José Calcina) and Sisi (Luisa Quispe) live a simple daily life made up of specific tasks. Every day, Virginio sets out with their small herd of llamas to graze, while Sisi makes an arduous walk to the village to fetch water. But a never-ending drought has brutally depleted the region, and water has almost run out. As their fellow villagers relent and move into the city, Virginio and Sisi resist. “The rain will come,” Virginio says. Sisi repeats, “the rain will come.”
Whether Virginio and Sisi will give up the home they’ve shared for decades is hardly ever in question. As viewers, we can’t possibly understand the deep bond they have to this land, even as the effects of climate change cause it to push back so fiercely against them. Their well-meaning grandson, Clever (Santos Choque), raised in the city, also can’t quite fathom their unfailing bond to the land, though he begins to understand it more in his efforts to convince them to move. The story forms naturally from how Grisi focuses on the small details that make up much of these character’s lives. Details like Virginio’s hat, which he puts on proudly every day before heading out with the llamas, or the small warm gaze shared between him and Sisi each time they wake up in the morning, facing each other from separate beds across their small room. There’s a sense of time shared, and lost, of a people and a way of life coming to an end.
Cinematographer Barbara Alvarez’s panoramic cinematography emphasizes the scale of the surrounding environment, a long stretch of barren desert at the base of a mountain range that has been dried of its nutrients. The village near Virginio and Sisi’s house is a ghost town, replete with abandoned structures and a non-functioning manual water pump. It’s a vision that would’ve benefited from the natural rawness of film. Occasionally these compositions, whilst gorgeous, can feel altogether too digital, as if they would’ve been better suited as still photographs rather than moving images. Locations like the inside of Virginio and Sisi’s home are too crisp and clean given their worn, rustic quality, oddly making such a naturalistic movie feel a bit artificial. Luckily, Calcina and Quispe, both non-professional actors, inhabit their roles completely and mostly make up for the occasional artifice of the film’s visuals. The mostly ambient score by Cergio Prudencio creates an ominous and mystical undertone that also serves to enrich Utama’s occasionally staid approach.
Perhaps the most interesting and unusual aspect of Grisi’s film is how it handles Quechua folklore. Early on, Virginio explains to Clever how a condor dies: when the bird feels it has come to the end of its use, it flies to the top of a mountain and lets itself fall. We get the sense this is how Virginio sees himself: an old man at the end of his life who feels as if he has given everything he has to give. Utama never quite makes this piece of cultural folklore into an overarching metaphor but weaves it in ever so delicately as if to suggest that there are elements to the world beyond our understanding. Even in the most formidable places, a home is a home.
Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber
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