"Masters take after their dogs, you know", says one of the protagonists, El Chivo, to his abductee, whom he’s been hired to kill. Muttered unwittingly in amusement, the line stands true for the entire film, which is an anthology of three distinct stories, its characters lives’ strangely intertwined through a road accident. Being from disparate backgrounds (economic inequality is major running theme of this multiple award-winning film), the 3 protagonists have very little in common except the attachment to their dogs, who seem to share an uncannily similar fate as their respective masters. The conflicts in their lives are expertly portrayed through these dogs.
This film is the perfect example of the "show, don’t tell" film-making principle, for there is hardly any unnecessary exposition about the characters and the situations they find themselves in. Right from the early scenes, Octavio, the young protagonist of the first story, betrays a palpable affection for his sister-in-law Susana, with whom he has been in love for a long time, before we see him declare his plans of eloping with her. A glamorous poster of a model in the second story perfectly represents her career aspirations and a life sunk in oblivion after she loses her leg in the accident. El Chivo’s longing to meet his daughter, who thinks her father is dead, is shown through the photo album he frequently flips through. The editing is superb as the sudden cuts and the blink-and-you-miss scenes help in establishing the hard-hitting realism of the movie. The next two stories make short appearances in the first, before being fleshed out separately as the plot unravels.
Dreaming of settling down with Susanna, Octavio enrolls his tenacious dog in an underground canine fight club to earn a quick buck. Within no time, the dog climbs the ladder of the dog-fighting scene to emerge a beast with a fierce reputation for the number of dogs he has either killed or injured. At the same time, Octavio shares the violence of his dog’s life in his own life, when he has his brother beaten up, and when he stabs a rival dog owner who shoots his dog. His aggression is in a way reactionary, similar to his canine friend, who gets in his first fight after being intimidated by a seasoned dog on the street.
The second story starts with the fashion model, Valeria, moving in with her lover Daniel, who has left his wife and daughters for her. After getting hit by Octavio’s car, she severely injures her leg. Unable to rescue her injured dog, who falls through a crevice in the floor, she begins blaming Daniel for not doing enough to get him out and doubts his love for her. Confined to her wheel-chair, her situation is not very different from her trapped dog as her anxiety for it and her own recovery is mirrored in its whines emanating from below the wooden floor. Her dream to return to her once successful modelling career bites the dust, when she loses her injured leg and watches an empty billboard from her window that had her glamorous poster earlier, looking over the city. By the time Daniel finally manages to get the dog out, it is too late and the holes in the floor are a grave reminder of the fissures in Valeria’s and Daniel’s relationship, who seems to ponder over his now waning love for the wheel-chair bound Valeria.
The accident which sees Valeria injuring her leg, also sees El Chivo, the third protagonist, who is a vagrant rag picker and a hit-man, find and heal the wounded dog of Octavio. He confronts his choice of profession, when the dog kills all of El Chivo’s other dogs, who seem to be his only companions in his rundown house. Shaken by the realization of the rot in his life reflected in the squalor of his surroundings through the murders he has committed, he spares the life of the above mentioned abductee. He then leaves the city after leaving an emotional explanation of the reason for his abandonment of his family on his daughter's answering machine.
Infidelity is a theme common to all three stories, but is handled in different ways throughout the narratives. Susanna, who has the chance to escape her abusive husband, and who shows all the tell-tale signs of a domestic violence victim, yields to the abuse and decides against abandoning him. This could be possibly because of her submission to abuse as a child, owing to her mother’s alcoholism, which is subtly hinted in the film. In contrast to this, Daniel, who has cheated on his wife, seems to silently regret his actions. The third story, where El Chivo’s wife marries his brother after the former’s incarceration, has some resemblance to Susanna and Octavio’s relationship, except for the fact that EL Chivo understands and accepts his estranged wife’s actions, while struggling to establish his right over his daughter. The scene,where he morphs from his unkempt appearance into a clean shaven and neat avatar, sporting a suit,is a poignant pointer to his earlier life of an affluent man, whose appearance is a far cry from the bedraggled rag-picker. Yet, both are the same person, serving as a reminder of how the affluent, driving away behind the tinted glasses of their cars and past the destitute walking down the street, are not so different from them and how difficult it is for people who have lost face in society to re-assimilate themselves back into the sphere of their former life.
P.S: I am glad to have watched this film on the big screen, courtesy the Jnana Probhodini Film Club.
No comments:
Post a Comment