FILM REVIEW
– LA ANTENA (2007)
A wonderful Argentinean film, which might make you think it was made in 1926, as much of the action takes place in a silent, Black & White world, and the film is largely homage to the surrealism of Buenel, and the modernist industrial dystopian visions of Frits Lang – some scenes are very reminiscent of Lang’s Metropolis.
In a strange town, nearly everyone has lost their voices, but everyone speaks in speech bubbles, enabling their words to float from their lips and move around, though people can grab words and move them aside or crush them.
Officially, only one woman still has a voice, but she appears to have no face. She is owned and controlled by a powerful TV station, who let her sing to the masses, as they eat the company’s TV dinners and take in the subliminal hypnotic messages that keep them under control.
The Voice (as she is called) has a secret though – she has a son who can also speak and sing. He is blind, and awaits a new set of eyes, (drawings, but which if put over the face, could allow him to see). But they are accidentally delivered to a young girl across the street instead.
Taking the eyes over, she discovers his secrets, as the totalitarian TV corporation’s (they have a swastika among their symbols), the girl, and her parents (separated by marital differences), learn of an older TV station in the mountains, and fly there by balloon suits (the father and daughter having seen a man tragically float away when one went out of control earlier in the film). The station, The Antenna of the title0, could allow the second voice to counter-the effects of the parent voice – which is to be used to hypnotise the people to sleep and steal their words and speech bubbles too.
Pursued by the rat-man assassin, the family fight to make the voices conflict, creating counter-voice and argument – As voices are restored, the people of the town rise up only in the voice of a loud piercing scream, rather than any expression of joy.
Strange, unsettling, and very beautiful, though at times the imagery and symbolism can be over-powering – undoubtedly a masterpiece though. Some scenes remain unforgettable – the eyes in an envelope, the balloon suits, the speech bubbles, and the evil sinister doctor with a large TV set for a silent but very articulate mouth.
LA ANTENA ON WIKIPEDIA http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454065/
Arthur Chappell
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