Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00  

April 18 2015, the Harvard Film Archive screened Two Shots Fired. This is the audio recording of the intro and the Q&A and discussion that followed. Participating are Haden Guest, HFA Director, and filmmakers Martín Rejtman and Matías Piñeiro. Take note that the recording begins after Haden Guest’s introduction.

Haden Guest  0:26   

[BEGINNING IS CUT OFF]…in doing so, starting to understand the kind of dialogue between these two artists whose work, while very different, nevertheless shares a deep and abiding interest in theatre, and in performance and in modes of comedy that I think both challenge and renew the promise of comedy, be it Shakespearean or be it screwball, as a way of reimagining the world through a logic of coincidence and circumstance. And so, again, I want to thank Martín Rejtman for being with us, especially his– He's been traveling all around the world, globe trotting and trying to set some kind of record, I think, and so I want to thank him for being able to come here to Cambridge. I also want to thank Matías, of course. I want to thank them both for also writing really lovely texts about each other's films, which are available in their original Spanish, but also there's an English translation online and at the box office as well.

So a few words about Dos disparos, Two Shots Fired, Martín Rejtman's first feature film since 2003, when he directed The Magic Gloves. Between The Magic Gloves and Two Shots Fired, he directed two really remarkable documentaries. One, Elementary Training for Actors, which is debatable whether it is a documentary or not or [CHUCKLE]… Martín says it isn't, I say it is. But it's a wonderful film, nevertheless. And I think Two Shots Fired really confirms Rejtman's really singular and important place in Argentine—and in world—cinema. It's a film I think, like in all of Rejtman’s films, objects are charged with meanings that are both patent, or both seemingly obvious, and yet obscure. And I think this is announced in the title itself. Like Matías, I'm intrigued by this title Two Shots Fired, because throughout this film, we'll see there's a logic of repetition, of twins, of seemingly-repeated events, of encounters that are charged with a strange sense of unresolved déjà vu. And, even in certain shots we would seem to return, as in the opening shot in the disco, to some of Martín's previous films—the opening shot in the disco, which for those of you who know Rejtman's films recalls quite beautifully, a very similar moment in Sylvia Prieto. I see this as Rejtman returning to a world—a world that he invented—and yet finding it somehow changed, somehow slightly—slightly different. And it's that difference, which I think makes it such a brave, uncompromising, and important film.

We're going to be having a conversation afterwards with Martín Rejtman and with Matías Piñeiro, so please stick around for that. And then afterwards, you're all invited for a reception up in the lobby of the Carpenter Center. This has all been made possible by our great friends, wonderful colleagues at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. I want to thank this really great institution, and I want to thank especially Paola Ybarra for her help in making this possible. I should point out just that we're also co-hosting another program next weekend with a Mexican filmmaker, Fernando Eimbcke, who's going to be here with a program of his work. But please join me with a round of applause for Paola and for DRCLAS... And for Martín Rejtman!

[APPLAUSE]

Martín Rejtman  4:32   

Thank you very much. I won't say much before the beginning of the film, just that I'm very happy to be here again. And also then I'm very happy that it's not going to be a Q&A after the film, but a conversation with Matías and with Haden. That's going to be, for me, much more pleasurable. I won't have to answer all the questions; we'll just discuss, I guess, about the movie and of course, you will be able to participate with questions and be part of the conversation. So I hope you like the film and you stay afterwards. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  5:10  

And now the discussion with Martín Rejtman, Matías Piñeiro, and Haden Guest.

Haden Guest  5:24  

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming back Martín Rejtman, joined as well by Matías Piñeiro.

[APPLAUSE]

Thank you so much for this really marvelous film. I have many...oh, there's so much to talk about here, but I want this to really be a conversation, you know, that can be really open. And so we can speak about this film, and we can also speak about many other things—about film, theater—wherever we want to take this conversation. But I mean, this is a return in many ways, and as I suggested before, it's also, to me, is a film that feels somehow slightly… There’s something slightly different. I was wondering if you could speak about the return to fiction filmmaking. And again, it's just… as a larger topic.

Martín Rejtman  6:24  

Yeah. For me, it's not a return because, I mean, I think I'm always doing things, different things, and I'm writing also short stories all the time. Not all the time, but you know, in between films. So in a way, it's a return to making a film with a professional film crew, you know, in an industrial kind of way. Because in the meantime, in between Los Guantes Mágicos—The Magic Gloves— and this film, I made two films that were done with like six people in the crew. The first one and the second one was shot with TV people, so it was not with people from the film industry. And so in that sense, yes, it is a return to making films in an industrial structure. But that's not all I do. I mean, I do other things too. So it's kind of tricky for me.

And, actually, I decided not to plan how to shoot the film. I planned everything. The script is very carefully written—and I always respect the script very much during the shoot—but I actually never planned, like, any day of the shooting. I didn't know what I was going to shoot. I was completely kind of clueless in the beginning of the day, and I had to kind of find my way. And I had the feeling all the time that it was like, for me, like making my first film in a way. So, yeah, it was kind of interesting, because on the one hand, I knew everything, and on the other one, I didn't know anything about what I was making. Because I rehearse a lot with the actors, you know, like, we rehearse with.. they had to learn how to play the recorder for months and months. And I was there in all the...I mean, we really worked very, very hard, but at the same time I didn't know how to shoot the film, so...

Haden Guest  8:36  

I mean, the look of the film is so...there's a sense of rigor and a sense of structure that comes across in every shot. This opening sequence, which I think is so amazing, where this series of exits—you know, Mariano exits the club, leaves the door open, exits the kitchen, you know, goes onto the yard, and ends with the dog exiting—I mean, there's a sense somehow of a kind of a logic to the image and to the sequence, that seems so exact, that so, you know...to hear that you didn't understand how the film will be shot is kind of surprising.

Martín Rejtman  9:15  

Well, it was like a day-by-day thing, you know? It wasn't that I did the découpage beforehand and the découpage was done the day of the shoot. I, you know, had a meeting with the system director and with the DP and we decided how the scenes were going to be shot, and what to do first, and this and that. So it was together that we planned the day and we were deciding which shots we were going to do.

Matías Piñeiro  9:49 

I was interested in the beginning of the project when you were writing it. Was it ever, like, a short story? Between Magic Gloves and this film, are there other projects that ended up being a short story, or that, from a short story, developed like a script, and then the script was not made? And how was the script, particularly in terms of this literature film?

Martín Rejtman  10:16

No, everything that is in the film, it was written as a film scene. And actually, I think I started writing the script even before The Magic Gloves somehow because, for example, the character of Ezekiel was already in the script of The Magic Gloves, and it was left out from that script. I mean, it was a guy living in the same building, and at one point he was buying the car from the main character of The Magic Gloves. You see that the building where Ezekiel lives is similar to the building in The Magic Gloves. And even at that point, I wanted to shoot in the same building. Well, I didn't want it to be the same building, but it's a location that is not easy to get in Buenos Aires because those kinds of buildings are hard to get, because they always renovate them in a very ugly way, and it's difficult to get them, like, either in the original state or in some kind of way that it looks okay. So I even went to look for the same building where we shot The Magic Gloves. Afterwards we shot somewhere else. But, so yeah, it's like an evolving process. I mean, it's all the time thinking of different scenes and characters, and putting them together, and at one point, I have a story. So all this process started even before The Magic Gloves, I think.

Matías Piñeiro  11:47  

And was it changed—the apartment for Magic Gloves—was it different? When you went to see the location?

Martín Rejtman  11:51  

Oh, no, we didn't find it, actually.

Matías Piñeiro  11:52

Ah.

Martín Rejtman  11:53  

We didn't have the exact address, and we didn't find it.

Haden Guest  11:59 

And you know—some of you may know this—but, you know, Martín Rejtman is, of course, an accomplished and celebrated writer of short stories, And his first film in fact, Rapado, came out of a collection of short stories. And I guess, to follow up on this—a question of script and of literature—I mean, the voice in this film is very particular—the voiceover—that we get in the way that suddenly the events of the beginning are put into the past, the way in which, you know, the tense changes—suddenly—of the film, the way in which it's first person, and then it also becomes this third person that’s speaking of other stories. And so I was wondering if you could maybe speak a bit about this voice over and voicing in this film. It seems oftentimes that there's a kind of force to language that's apart from just communication. It seems sometimes characters aren't speaking necessarily to each other. They seem sometimes to be speaking, sort of, at each other, like the sort of non sequiturs that sort of come out in the Fabián Arenillas character, especially.

Martín Rejtman  13:13 

For me, the voiceover is one more way to make the story move forward. I mean, that's the only way I think of the voice-over. And I started using voiceover in my second film, and then in The Magic Gloves I use it again, and now I'm using it again here. And for me, I think I started using voiceover because I was totally against the idea that the image was more important than the sound in cinema, which was something that I was told so many times when I was studying cinema, that everything has to be said through images. I hate that, and I think as a reaction to that—maybe like a naive reaction to that—I started using voiceover and I kind of got used to it, and now I like it. It adds another dimension. And the particular thing about this voiceover was that when I wrote the script, I wrote the voice-over, not for Mariano, but for Ezekiel. And then ‘til the last day of the editing, Ezekiel was going to do the voiceover. Then the last day I changed and I called Mariano to record the voiceover. I changed, of course, the person...you know, it was more in a first-person now. Before, it was more in a third-person, and I changed it, and I liked it better.

Matías Piñeiro  14:37  

One thing about, like, there's a very “world” idea... When you're looking for the locations, which would be the characteristics you're looking for? What sort of a city or, like, world? Are you looking for a particular world to create through the locations or what's the idea when you're looking for locations? Because they really look like a Buenos Aires from Rapado, from The Magic Gloves, it's nice how they somehow belong to the same universe. Which are the decisions there?

Martín Rejtman  15:11  

For me, well, I'm very conscious of the locations. I am very conscious that if I have two houses, and if they look similar, it’s for a reason that they look similar. Like Susana’s house and Liliana's house, for me, had to be similar. And somehow they are. Lilliana house is like a—how do you say—like, degrade...degraded? How do you say this?

Haden Guest  15:35  

Rundown house?

Martín Rejtman  15:37  

Rundown version of Susana’s, which is not like—it's kind of run down too, in a way—so it's a little bit lower. And also, I think of the locations as if I was casting a movie in a way, no? You cannot have two characters that are blonde, because you can get confused somehow. So I try to make the locations very distinctive. And that's my only...yeah, my first concern. But at the same time, as you say, they look a little bit like from another era. But I think that in a city like Buenos Aires, you have things from different periods of time and all those things live together somehow. Some people will look at the film, and they say, “Well, when does it take place? I mean, is it today? Or is it like ten years ago?” And I don't mind that feeling. It’s not that I'm looking for that, but...

Matías Piñeiro16:38 

No, it’s a peculiar... [UNKNOWN] Buenos Aires, you know, that it's..

Martín Rejtman  16:43  

Yeah, it's like...

Matías Piñeiro  16:45  

But it is Buenos Aires at the same time.

Martín Rejtman  16:47  

Yeah, but I always prefer the neighborhoods not with big buildings, but with more, like, little houses and stuff. And probably, it may be a little nostalgic, because those neighborhoods are not there anymore. So I have to go to the suburbs to shoot sometimes.

Haden Guest  17:07  

I mean, I guess I'm also interested in—just to go back to this topic of sound—because it seems like, in this film there's a kind of alternate language that seems to be being spoken by objects, you know, that they seem to want to communicate—these cell phones that are always going off, these, you know, alarm clocks that mark a kind of rhythm of when to turn over when you're sunbathing. And then, of course, the flute itself, but it seems it's something else. It seems that at a certain time, there's almost a level of emotion that doesn't exist in people? You know, this boy has been wounded, and yet, you know, he doesn't seem to have any scars, really. But then the wall has this scar that everybody sort of looks at with this sort of empathy, you know? And then, even the point where the piano teacher is playing the flute, and then the wall sort of like, almost reacts as if it's like a kind of, you know, so...

Martín Rejtman  18:05  

It's alive.

Haden Guest  18:07  

Yeah, as if it's alive, or the metal detectors that they, like...I was wondering if you could speak about this, because it seems like there's something...there's a real emotional resonance in the sound.

Martín Rejtman  18:15  

Well, because I think there are lots of ways of showing emotions in movies, no? And usually, some people say, “Okay, all these characters are kind of mechanical, they don't have emotions,” but as you say, I think you can build other kinds of emotions through the connection of the characters with the objects, or through the connection with the characters, with locations, or me, I can, you know, as a director, I can create a different emotion in an audience than, you know, just playing some music with a character suffering, you know. It's like, I think it's a way of…  Film allows you to play with emotions in so many different ways. Usually we are limited to one way we can create so many connections.

Haden Guest  19:09  

Well, I mean, something I guess I can ask both of you, I mean, I think has to do with comedy, because I think that this a topic that comes up a lot in discussion of your films, Martín. The question is like, “Okay, is this a comedy?” I think sometimes is asked, or, “if it is, what kind of comedy is it?” Again, this is something I see you both as working in kind of alternate modes of comedy. You, Matías, returning to the sort of, like, Shakespearean idea of comedy and, you know, mistaken identities, and things like this. And so I guess I was wondering if you could speak maybe a bit about what comedy is to you—how you understand comedy, and how you see, or if you see your films at all? Or what kind of relationship you see with them to traditions of either theatrical comedy or cinematic history?

Martín Rejtman  20:04  

No, yeah...for me really, the tradition I like in comedies, a screwball comedy, the American screwball comedy, that's the real comedy I like. But of course, I mean, we are not in the 30s or 40s, and I don't think I can do that. So what I do is I make films and I take elements from different places—like films, or books, or stories I hear, or things I imagine—so I put all those things together. And I like to play with humor. So I wouldn't call my films comedies. I think they play with the idea of comedy, in a way. But for example, with this film, when I started the project, I wanted to get away from comedy as much as possible. And that's why I began the film with the opening sequence of this guy who finds a gun and shoots himself twice. And I thought that there was no way of making a funny movie after that, you know? There was no way of using humor in the film after that. And then it took me a while to realize that, yes, I mean, there was a way and even if it was risky, I had to try it because it was the direction that the story was taking me. So in a way, I cannot get away from humor, I think, but I don't think I make comedies.

Haden Guest  21:35 

I mean...you know, I think in screwball comedy, a lot of humor comes from repetition, right? You know, one character, you know, Cary Grant falling over however many times, or Henry Fonda, let's say in The Lady Eve, and it seems that, you know, in your film there is, you know, I guess that's the question. When we see Mariano then cutting the grass right after he's gotten out of the hospital, he's back to the same thing. There's a kind of repetition. And so there's a question there, I mean, I think you're asking it: “Is this funny?” But there’s also a question, I think, in the repetitions that we see in the film, often at times seem to become uncanny. You know, where we've got like the twins, of course, but then like the two dogs, you know, Lilliana is wounded in the foot, and then we see that—you know, from walking barefoot—and then we see the bare foot of the driver, and so there all these series of sort of echoes of repetitions that point, again, to maybe not a comedy, but again, this is the sort of order of the world, this kind of logic, that's a kind of hidden language connecting things.

Martín Rejtman  22:43  

Those are the things that, for me, helped me find a story, in a way. I mean, I look at those things—those are like the landmarks to make me, you know, start...yeah, finding the story because when I start writing, I have no idea where I go. So when I find those kind of repetitions or those little things that connect to each other, for me it's the...yeah, it's what guides me towards the story somehow...but I never know if I will find it until the script is finished.

Matías Piñeiro  23:25  

It's not the first time that I've seen the film, and what I found this time, which I connect somehow to what you're saying, is that these strokes of chances of this coincidence are kind of—not justified, but everything has its way. Everything has its justification in a way, but it's shown in a way that it doesn't seem like a justification, and that makes it, like, very good, I think. Like when the guy that was in the trio with a girl, and the other boyfriend appears with the twin brothers...
Haden Guest 24:03

Oh right, the punk rocker. Right.

Matías Piñeiro 24:04

...and there, when you...the first shock is like this idea of big chance or coincidence. But then the idea that, no, he just said, like, “Forward the email.” And that is something that has been already said before, but when you're watching it, you don't need it exactly. But then, I really much appreciated how the idea of chance and hidden paths work in the film. Like, nothing is just like a...una ocurrencia. How would you say that?

Haden Guest  24:37  

Like an occurrence?

Matías Piñeiro  24:38  

Ocurrencia is something that you just, like thought.

Haden Guest

Oh right, right.

Matías Piñeiro

It’s not just a clever idea. It's something much more deep, and I think that it has to do with this idea of hidden paths in between the scenes and between the characters. And I thought it was very strong. Yes, now then, I’d like to see it again and again, like I see all these strong...that I sense it when I saw it, but then like now, it's like I appreciate it more when I see it many times. And it has to do with this idea of hidden structures, you know.

Haden Guest  25:15  

Well, I feel like, I mean, both of you also...if I work, I think, with these ensemble sort of ideas of cinema enough, with multiple stories that, you know, are connected or not in some ways, and I feel like, you know, with you, Martín, this film maybe goes the furthest in having these almost distinct, like, films—I don't want to say almost like films within a film—these separate sort of chapters that seem at times to go further away, and then at the same time they connect. You know, the story of the dog where we follow then Selzer who could be Yago, but then it comes back, because then, you know, Mariano’s outside waiting. And so there's also, though—it's something it's a kind of like digressive structure, like one door opens, and you go out, and another door opens, and another door opens. I mean, there’s may be a little bit of that in some of some of your films, though I think they’re much…

Matías Piñeiro  26:13  

In the structures, maybe, I don't know, but sometimes maybe structure is something that is very much in the beginning, when I am thinking of a film, I don't know. It's a device, in a way. I, like, think in structures [INAUDIBLE].

Haden Guest  26:30  

I mean, with you though, Martín, I think also relates to the idea of the short story. I mean, I feel like your writing is very, how to say, there's something very lapidarian, very, like, contained within the world of each of these stories. Even within the phrase, like you're phrasing is so, sort of, I don't know, sort of clean and neat. So I don't know if you see some connection between the idea of the short story and your style, which is so—I don't want to say minimalist—but it's just it's very restrained.

Martín Rejtman  27:08  

Well, it's strange because my last short stories are very long and they're very digressive—as in this film—so they get away from the idea of short story in a way, no? Because they are like 120 pages or 100 pages—it's really like a long short story. So in literature, I'm also being more digressive and getting away from a core, and getting away from like a classical structure, maybe. In the film, when I thought about this getting away with Susana, the mother, to the seaside and having all this completely separate story, sometimes I have the feeling in films, that once you get to the middle of the film, everything has been said, and then what you see at the end is just the development, and I sometimes I get a little bored about that. So in this film, I wanted to just to get away from the characters and have some kind of a vacation from the story I was telling in a way, but not really going too far.

Haden Guest  28:24  

Should we take some questions from the audience? Let's see if we have any questions or comments out there. If we do, we've got microphones on either side … [PAUSE] João Pedro? Here comes the microphone.

Audience 1 28:44  

Hi. You said that you respect very much a script. And I wanted to know, is it very different—the film from the script? Like, the finished film? And also, in the editing, if you change a lot of stuff, or...? I’m curious.

Martín Rejtman  29:04  

In this film I did. I did change some things in the editing. But in my other films, I didn't. In this one, I think since it had a more flexible structure, I could allow myself to change things and move things around, so I did. I didn't change any of the dialogues though. I mean, the dialogues are, like, something that I wrote, and then I would rehearse with the actors, and that's exactly the same thing I wrote. But I left out some scenes and I switched around others, so there are some differences.

[INAUDIBLE, AUDIENCE FOLLOWING UP]

Yeah, well, not huge differences, no. But, like, for example, like I remember now because for me, now the film is...the script doesn't exist anymore, you know? Once the film is made, the script disappears in a way. But there were some scenes...I don't know...like the flute lessons, the teacher teaching him how to play the flute, it was somewhere else, and you know, we turned some things around like that. Or, for example, when Mariano is holding the pillow, and the mother goes...that scene was somewhere else also, and we put it there. So, in that way we changed things. And also, we left out a couple of scenes.

Haden Guest  30:30  

Other questions? Yes, Rosaria.

Audience 2  30:38  

[INAUDIBLE] ...talk a little bit more about it? And it's a question of dissonance as it appears in the film, because music seems to have a very important role in the whole orchestral– in the group of flutes and that, sort of, the difficulty to achieve harmony. And at the same time, the way the characters speak, seem to be very kind of monotone, as if they were reading the script, and even sort of reproducing...I'm thinking about the bearded guy with a flute. I mean, at times, it seems that he is reading a manual of instructions on how to proceed. And all of a sudden, he takes up the whole discourse of, I don’t know, talent shows, about how she should proceed. And we kind of expect what he's going to say. And even the jargon, it seems to be so, I don’t know...it distances so much from the experience of what's going on. So I'm just bringing up the topic of the musicality of the word, and how music comes up in the film.

Martín Rejtman  31:50  

Well, when I rehearse with the actors, I rehearse also, like, the way...the music of what they say, in a way, because it's something that...it’s already in the script for me. So in a way, it is like a musical part that we follow. And I couldn't tell you why, but that's the way I think the dialogue should be set in order to have the meaning it has to have. It's a matter of meaning for me, because if it was said in another way, it would mean something different. If it was said in a slower way, the meaning would be different—the humor wouldn't be there. Or if the pauses between one line and the next is bigger, yeah, the effect is different. So although things are in the script, and then we rehearse with the actors. And the music—the quartet, the recorder quartet—that comes from my personal history. I was playing in a recorder quartet when I was, like, eighteen. And then I always wanted to have that in a movie. I like the music they play a lot, and I wanted to have the music in the movie. And so, of course it's dissonant, because there is the sound of Mariano that doesn't sound right. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I cannot have just people playing music, because it would be a little bit boring, in a way. [LAUGHS] I mean, I need an excuse to show that music, and the excuse is to have Mariano’s, like, dissonant sound.

Haden Guest  33:35  

But it seems there’s something very concrete. I mean, to maybe go a bit further with this topic of—or go somewhere else with the topic of music—you know, it seems like music is this sort of absolute, sort of, concrete presence. And so much so that, you know, that it doesn't necessarily integrate fully with the world, you know? I'm just thinking, the ways in which these characters are listening to music in these contained, you know, the boy in the car putting on that heavy metal with the dog. But then also, like, in these nightclubs, where you’ve got the different kind of music, and then there's that point where he's in the car listening to his—I mean, maybe it's even music from his own quartet—with music of the rock club outside, and they don't meet, you know. And there's sort of, I don't know. There's a sense of...in which it's not something in the background, that is to say, but these sounds actually have a kind of presence and sort of, I don't know, almost enveloping sort of power.

Martín Rejtman  34:35  

Yeah, well, it's a very personal thing—I think that maybe that's what you mean? I don't know. It's like, for Mariano, he is divided between the music in the beginning and the quartet. And then he cannot get into the club because of the [?bullies?]. That's why he listens to uh….ancient music, you say? Ancient music?

Haden Guest  35:00 

Yeah, ancient music.

Martín Rejtman  35: 01 

Ancient music...in the car, to a CD. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's the words of the characters, I think, no? I mean, it's a...

Haden Guest  35:10 

It also has to do with the brevity, the way in which you're always cutting this music, you know, right from the beginning, we see this, with the dance club…

Martín Rejtman  35: 17 

It’s abrupt, yeah.

Haden Guest  35:18 

...these abrupt cuts, which just sort of let it float out there. And also the juxtaposition of these very different kinds of music.

Martín Rejtman  35:25

Yeah...somehow I like the abruptness in cinema. I like the idea of switching from one thing to the next. Like, changing from one location to another one and having the ellipses. I think all those things, for me, are what makes cinema cinema, in a way. For me, it's not so much about...in my case, no? Matías is more, like...fluid, no? And for me, it's more like really cutting off from one scene to the next.

Matías Piñeiro  35:57  

And how about writing the line and then having someone said that line? Do you need a lot of adjustment in order to get the pace? Or because...

Martín Rejtman  36:08  

With some actors it’s just instant, and with other actors it’s weeks and weeks and weeks of working. [LAUGHS] It depends, really. Some, like for example, Fabián Arenillas, the guy who plays Arturo? He [understood] right away. And for example, for the voice over, Mariano... When he was acting in the film, it took me a long time to get him in the mood. And then when he recorded the voiceover, he did it just once, and I didn't have to give him any instructions. He knew exactly what the music of the text was.

Matías Piñeiro  36:45 

With the actor—that is Arturo—you work before…

Martín Rejtman  36:48  

I worked before with, yeah. A couple of...

Matías Piñeiro  36:49

in Elementary.

[OVERTALK]

Martín Rejtman  36:52

Elementary, and in...

Haden Guest  36:53

And in Guantes.

Martín Rejtman

In Guantes too.

Haden Guest  37:00

David.

David Pendleton 37:05  

Yeah, I wanted to ask you, Martín, a little bit more about repetition, and whether you see it purely as a structuring device? Because, you know, typically in movies or in literature, repetition usually accrues meaning. And so there's so much about breath in the first part of the film, him playing the recorder—I mean, it’s not just music, it's a recorder, right? It's about his breath. And then the things about smoking, for instance, it seemed like there's this sort of recurrent attention to breathing. And for me, that was sort of making me...then I sort of thinking thematically, sort of thinking about meaning behind that. And I'm wondering, again, to what extent you're interested in having these things accrue meaning through repetitions, or whether they're just this sort of structuring device for you to help plot things out.

Martín Rejtman  37:58 

No, I'm conscious of some of the repetitions and I’m not conscious of a lot of them, I guess. Because many times, you know, when people start talking about repetitions in the film, I just notice that, okay, yeah, it's true. But many of those, yes, of course, I'm conscious, and they're more like, yeah, like, struct...how do you say? Structural devices? Structural devices, in a way, yeah. But it's not only in an abstract way that there are structural devices because, when they become alive, for me in a way, I accept them. Otherwise, you know, if they are mechanical, I just don't like them. Now, for me the main repetition in the film is Mariano shooting himself again, with the gun that is unloaded. And for me, that's very significant. I wanted...I really needed to have that. And until I found that moment, I wasn't sure whether I had a movie or not, in a way. What to do with Mariano, and his shooting himself. I mean, in a way I needed to close that, and when I found that scene, I said, “Okay.” And then I moved on to another story, because that's when we go to the beach.

Haden Guest  39:15  

I mean, I do want to just maybe ask a bit more about the dog, because I find that to be such a fascinating moment where it either could be...I mean, at one point, we believe that this is absolutely the same dog. And then another time, we just think this can’t be possible, and it's just this wonderful, rich ambiguity here. And it's a sense almost of the uncanny, you know, so…

Martín Rejtman  39:44  

So yeah, well, we used the same dog. [LAUGHTER] And for me, it's the same dog, although, just for me, I don't know about...it's like, when I wrote the script, I thought, yeah, it's the same dog. But, of course, I don't really know now if it's the same dog, I mean, it's in the movie, so it's not mine anymore, so. But also, you have the same feeling I think, at the very, very end, when Ezekiel thinks that he sees Ana in the theater. So he even doubts if she is or she is not Ana. So it's, in a way, it's the same thing that happens with a dog now, where the audience doesn't know, and Ezekiel doesn't know. So we end the film, like, with doubts, mostly I think, no? I decided to come back to the story of the family at the end, because I think I needed to close that story somehow. But I also felt that I needed, like, a weak ending for the film. An ending with doubts, and an ending with the weakest character of them all, which is for me Ezekiel. For me, the main characters in the film are Mariano, Susana, and Ezekiel—the family—and Ezekiel, I think, he is the weakest, because really nothing happens to him. I mean, Mariano shoots himself twice, Susana is really, like, suffering about it, and Ezekiel is like, okay, taking care somehow of the situation in a way, you know. But he's the weakest, and I wanted to end the film with a weak point in a way.

Haden Guest  41:33  

Well, are there other… yes, Will, up here in front. Okay, hold on, let's just get the mic, ‘cause you’re up here in the front.

Audience 3 41:43  

Curious about the film that Ezekiel is watching at the end, you don't have to tell if you don't want to, but...

Martín Rejtman  41:50  

Yeah, well, it's something that we made up, I mean, it's not a film. It doesn't exist as a film. I mean, we use some different....I mean, we shot different little things in between, you know, at the end of the day, whenever we could. I needed to have a storm. And then I needed to have the movie theater dark, and then I needed to have it light. So that's all I knew I needed in the scene, for him to see and not to see Ana.

Audience 3 42:23 

It almost seems like the very first shot as well, except the audience in the film—in the theater, I guess—is originally us right? In the first shot when there's a kind of flashing light? It’s like almost the same effect as a storm at the end. And I really thought a lot about this idea of, like, resurrection. I think Matías notes a little bit, he mentions how, at the beginning, he shoots himself, and then he doesn't die, he's kind of brought back to life, and the gun as well, is buried and comes back up. And there's a lot of these other pairings that kind of seem to, like, not only indicate some similarity, but also kind of measure this passage of time, almost? But I'm curious, what you just mentioned about Ezekiel, kind of he's weak, he doesn't necessarily change, or something like that. If you could talk maybe a little bit more about that.

Martín Rejtman  43:22 

About? Sorry, about the...

Haden Guest  43:25  

That Ezekiel’s weakness, and this idea that you could have this character that is somehow outside the logic of…

Audience 3  43:31 

Exactly, yeah.

Haden Guest  43:32  

...the other characters in the film.

Martín Rejtman  43:36  

Yeah, well, um...[PAUSE] he’s the weakest in a way—in a narrative way—but at the same time, he is the one who takes care of his brother at one point, no? So, in a family sense, I don't think he's the weakest, but he’s the weakest for the film, I think, no? So it's different, I think.

Audience 3 43:56 

Because I think that I identify with this family [INAUDIBLE]

Martín Rejtman 44:07 

With whom I identified most? [CHUCKLE]

Audience 3 44:09

Yeah.

Martín Rejtman  44:10  

No, it's I think it was the whole family. I mean, it's the whole family, I think, the three characters. I mean, it's like, they make one character in a way if you want.

Haden Guest  44:21  

Well, there is something, you know, we've seen this kind of character… It seems like in your films, like, everybody's always, you know, separated or separating. There's a sense of, how to say, a distance between people, but that somehow brings them closer together? The way in which strangers instantly become kind of intimate, but in a kind of intimate distance, we can say, you know, where Liliana says, like, “Oh, I'm actually not really her friend,” you know, even though she'd been acting like it. So it also seems, again, this idea of sort of an intimate distance. I think it's something that's strong in your film, and it's also, I think, between generations in the film.

Martín Rejtman  45:05  

Yeah, somehow I need to keep some distance with the situations with the characters and I don't feel I can get very close. For me, it's obscene to get so close. To make a close up, you know, I have to think many times before I make a closeup, because it seems that it's a lack of respect somehow. [LAUGHS] I mean, I need to be discreet, you know. It's like I need some discretion and I had to find things within that frame that I find interesting and that are alive, that our intention with each other, that make a spark somehow? So, other films, you can see people screaming or shouting or crying, and I couldn't do that. It's like I can’t. I can't shoot that, I don't know. It doesn't come to me. It's not natural to me to do that. So I have to find the emotion somewhere else.

Haden Guest  46:05  

We've got another question here, from George in the middle.

Audience 4  46:11  

Matías, I was wondering what you think of this idea of discretion? Because you make such intimate close-ups and I just wonder how you react to that idea?

Matías Piñeiro  46:28  

Yeah, I don’t think… I also think the same way, that I cannot expose the characters too much. I also don't like to expose the characters too much. But I don't connect it directly to the close-ups, or “that's a way of his mise en scéne and of his way of thinking that works in the film. And his complete logic. And other people have other logics.” The idea of the close-up, for me, it has other functions that [don’t] have to do [with], “Oh, how close or far away I am from the characters,” [that] work in another idea that—not in the same idea—that I think that we also share about this idea of not showing absolutely everything. I actually like that, even though yeah, from being very close, we start seeing something else, that it's not only what the plot requires, no? But it's something different because the logic of the films are different in that sense, even though there's the same need to to keep a distance, but that in this case is not physical.

Haden Guest  47:44  

I mean, I think also not just close-up, like, cinematic close-up, but I think also this idea of, you know, not explaining character motivation, I think, you know, things like that kind of... and I feel like, that is something that you share. I mean, you think about these films like Todos mienten, where we've got this deception within deception, but ultimately...

Matías Piñeiro  48:05

Yeah, you know the relationships of the characters...

Haden Guest 48:07

Right.

Matías Piñeiro  48:08

And, yeah, I really like the gang that organizes in the sea trip [CHUCKLE].

Haden Guest 48:14

Right.

Matías Piñeiro  48:15

All these people living together, about the energies that it produces. Estrangement. I don't know if it's estrangement.

Haden Guest 48:23

Estrangement, right.

Matías Piñeiro  48:24

...that produces that… Suddenly, all these people are living together who happen to be like, “Oh, wait, which are...why are they together?” and so on. And I think that it worked very well—to make the strangeness, to make this idea of doubt, and questioning the image over and over again, and things that were not possible made possible, and then you find the possibility of, I don’t know. And it's very comedic also, suddenly all these people living together. Like, the cocktail that they...I don’t know. There's a movement there, in this kind of distance, [but] still there's a lot of movement that I really appreciated also. And that has to do with rhythm. I think that in the film, there's something about the rhythm of words, that somehow is something that you may be taking from the comedies or...it's a tone. Yeah, it's like it's strange to call...to manage these films from a genre kind of structure. But I think, when I see the film, I see this importance of rhythm, this rigor in rhythm and that produces a tone. So there's a tone that it's not genre dividing, but it sets a tone that divides the film from other films, or separates or creates, like, a characterization as us, like a certain kind of lighting defines film noir for instance, or certain topics, Western, certain gestures, or something else. And I really appreciate the strength of this body organized in a very peculiar way. And I really appreciated all the people together. And I told you this, but I felt that the character of Liliana was pretty… how she… everybody, or every of these actors are giving something of themselves in a way? How they process the tone that you propose, and that it's in every one of them. And I like how I don't know this actress, but somehow, it brings me a lot of images from her. As it happens, the same thing with a teacher that I know that actress, Susanna, that I know, and I very much like how they're very different, but then [they get] together. They get together, thanks to you, in a way.

Martín Rejtman  50:50  

Well, and that's the job of directing actors, you know? Finding the common ground, you know, of the actor with the character and of the actor with what the director wants from them. So it's like finding common grounds to work comfortably somehow.

Matías Piñeiro  51:06

And still, I find that it's this connection. And still, you see the little differences that are great, that I think they're also great how they're all like the same tone, but at the same time, you can see something that they are also adding, like the difference between Laura or Susana or Daniela. I really like this unity and movement at the same time.

Martín Rejtman  51:31

Because for me, they're all very different, but I keep hearing that they're also similar, so.

Matías Piñeiro  51:37  

Yeah yeah yeah. For me, it's like both things at the same time, that it has an ear that...I really appreciated that.

Haden Guest  51:48  

Well, let's take one final question, and then we'll go have fun in the reception upstairs.

Audience 5  51:54

This is just a little question for Martín, but I noticed in the credits that you use clips from two films. One was Mostly Martha and the other was a film that I didn't recognize. But now that I know that you just made up a movie for Ezekiel to be watching at the end, is there any reason why you use those two real films in particular, like, you like them?

Martín Rejtman  52:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the same reason. Instead of shooting the storm and all those images ourselves, we got… Mostly Martha was produced by one of our co-producers, our German co-producer. And so we mixed up some of those images and we made up a soundtrack and so it's like a movie that doesn't exist really. And the other movies that they watch on TV, when they are at the seaside, with a lot of shooting and what we did there was...yeah, the movie was not black-and-white, so we turned it black-and-white, and we distorted it, and it's, like, we just use the material for doing something else. It's like we needed that.

Haden Guest  53:02  

Well, thank you all. We'll be back tomorrow night with Matías Piñeiro and Martín Rejtman.

[APPLAUSE]

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