Bath Film Festival 2007

The Violin (El Violin)

While his son organises conventional resistance against the militia that has occupied his mountain village, the older and wiser Plutarco exploits the Commandante’s weakness for music to hit back. Reminiscent of Soy Cuba but less proselytising, this striking film makes use of high-contrast monochrome photography, deliberate pacing and sporadic dialogue to convey a heightened impression of realism which brilliantly serves the universality of its subject, the rebellion of the oppressed. Almost everything is conveyed directly by the imagery - opening scenes of torture and rape, imparted less-than-graphically but all the more effective for that, suggest the collective agonies of the downtrodden, and lead character Plutarco’s quiet refusal at the other end of the film similarly stands for all acts of individual or communal defiance. A film that shows its story rather than tells it, El Violin deploys a delicious sleight of hand which keeps us guessing as much as do the faces of the characters themselves. CB

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