Too Soon Gone: The Noir Legacy of Fabián Bielinsky
An edited version of this article appeared in the May/June 2009 issue of the Noir City Sentinel. To subscribe, become a member of The Film Noir Foundation.
Two movies. That’s not much of a legacy. But the brief filmography of Argentina’s Fabián Bielinsky is enough to prove that, with his death in 2006, world cinema lost more than a gifted storyteller. After watching Nueve Reinas (2000) and the darkly glittering jewel El Aura (2005), Film Noir Foundation founder Eddie Muller said he was “so miserably sure that Bielinsky would have been the greatest writer-director of contemporary noir.”
Born in Buenos Aires in 1959, Bielinsky earned his stripes as an assistant director on over 400 commercials and numerous feature films. During this fifteen-year apprenticeship he worked on projects as varied as an ad directed by German auteur Wim Wenders and Eversmile, New Jersey (1989), an oddity about an itinerant dentist fated to be remembered as the other movie Daniel Day-Lewis made the year of his Academy Award-winning triumph in My Left Foot. In 1998, Bielinsky received his first above-the-line credit as one of three writers of the allegorical science fiction film La Sonámbula (Sleepwalker). He longed to make his own movies but felt hamstrung by an industry dominated by established names and prejudiced against genre fare. He ultimately made the transition to the director’s chair the way so many of the greats did – by winning a contest. The Patagonik Film Group selected his screenplay out of 350 entries in a 1998 competition, giving Bielinsky a green light and a modest $1.3 million budget. The resulting movie revolutionized Argentinean filmmaking.
Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens) is a con man caper with a distinctive Latin flavor, seasoned by the corruption endemic during Argentina’s fiscal crisis of the 1990s. Veteran grifter Marcos (Ricardo Darín) bails novice Juan (Gastón Pauls) out of trouble for his own selfish reasons; he needs a partner for the day, and his usual sidekick is unavailable. Marcos gives Juan a crash course in the art of the short con. Among his pearls is knowing when to act aggrieved. “The more offended you are, the less suspicious you look,” he advises his protégé. But plans change quickly when an aging confederate presents Marcos with a “once in a lifetime” opportunity – unloading a forgery of the title sheet of Weimar Republic stamps on a shady financier poised to flee the country. To make the score Marcos reaches out to his estranged sister, Juan risks his own nest egg, and each man will have to trust the other.
Bielinsky’s film is ferociously entertaining. Breezy yet tense, packed with reversals and plot complications but never difficult to follow, culminating in a note-perfect ending. Much of the film’s impact can be traced to the bravura sequence when Marcos points out to Juan the countless “mustard chuckers ... operators, swindlers” hiding in plain sight on the streets of Buenos Aires, watching for any hint of vulnerability on which to pounce. Bielinsky’s on-the-fly technique, which Darín described as “almost as if we were carrying out a raid or pulling off a heist,” only adds credibility. Nueve Reinas posits a world of tricksters and thieves, leavened by the wounded insistence of all involved that they are not crooks. Even the acquaintance offering Marcos a motorcycle with minor damage, namely a “small caliber” perforation in the gas tank, bristles at the accusation. It’s all just business.
Hollywood took note of Nueve Reinas’s international success, but Bielinsky resisted the call. An Americanized version happened without him. As remakes go, Criminal (2004) is not at all bad. It has a nice sense of scale, a game cast featuring John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal, and a feel for the multicultural vibe of Los Angeles, beautifully shot by cinematographer Chris Menges. Producers Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney turn it into a scruffy, low-key cousin of their Ocean’s Eleven films. (Soderbergh cowrote the adaptation with director Gregory Jacobs under the name Sam Lowry, the Brazil-inspired pseudonym he used on The Underneath, his 1995 retooling of the classic noir Criss Cross.) Criminal’s primary problem is that it simply cannot compare with the movie that spawned it. It lacks the danger and unpredictability of Nueve Reinas. Some of the best beats and lines from Bielinsky’s film had to be cut because they were unique to the original’s setting. Take the ending. There’s no way it could be used in an American film. Actually, scratch that. It might work now.
Nueve Reinas has a jaundiced view of human relations, but Bielinsky’s noir sensibility would not reach full pungent bloom until his follow-up effort. El Aura, known as Dawn in Argentina, is a singular achievement, a truly existential film that comes across as an unholy combination of Richard Stark and Oliver Sacks. Its cunning use of traditional genre elements – fate, choice and chronic blackouts – makes it one of the finest cinematic noirs of this decade.
We meet the film’s nameless protagonist (Ricardo Darín again) lying amidst a swirl of ATM receipts, seemingly rehearsing for his own chalk outline. He’s not dead, just suffering from an epileptic fit. The character works as a taxidermist, bloodlessly applying logic to recreate the savagery of animals. As a colleague notes, he has “a weird fantasy for a taxidermist who’s never gotten in a fight with anyone,” and that’s plotting perfect heists he lacks the nerve to carry out. “It can be done neatly. It can be done well ... There’s no reason why anyone should die,” Darín insists. “Yes, there’s a reason,” his skeptical colleague replies. “There’s a load of guys with guns.”
Darín gets an unlikely chance to put his theories to the test. While on a hunting trip he accidentally kills a man, only to discover that his victim was an underworld figure whose plan to rob the local casino is already in motion. The taxidermist can step into the dead man’s role and live the fantasy he has long imagined.
Bielinsky’s growth as a filmmaker, from the effervescent charm of Nueve Reinas to the command on display in El Aura, is hugely impressive. Much of the latter movie plays with minimal dialogue, communicating information purely through images. Consider the sheer elegance of the way Bielinsky uses details in the background of shots to convey that the taxidermist’s wife has left him. He immediately follows this revelation with an extraordinary series of edits moving Darín from his apartment to the lush greenery of the Patagonian countryside. Darín suffers a seizure when he’s alone in the woods about to bring down a deer, and thanks to Bielinsky’s kinetic treatment of the incident we experience it right along with him.
But it’s the robbery scenes that showcase Bielinsky’s mastery. Early in the film, Darín waits with a fellow taxidermist to cash his check. As Darín explains how he’d loot the place, his scheme comes to life. It’s beautifully choreographed mayhem, the sad sacks in line behind them abruptly transformed into icy professionals, Darín and his associate blithely commenting on the action. Contrast this with the botched factory job that occurs halfway through the movie. Darín is no longer conductor but bystander. The sequence deftly illustrates the power and the impotence of bearing witness as Darín reacts to every gunshot and cry of agony, trying to piece together what went wrong.
El Aura has style to burn, but Bielinsky knew that true noir is about character. He has an able collaborator in Ricardo Darín. The actor shines playing a man who takes refuge in his intellect as he finds his masculinity constantly questioned. He’s at his best during a halting speech to the dead man’s wife in which he explains the not-altogether-unpleasant sensation (the aura of the title) that precedes one of his neurological episodes: “There’s a moment, a shift ... things suddenly change ... The fit is coming, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Nothing. It’s horrible ... and it’s perfect. Because during those few seconds, you’re free. There’s no choice. No alternative. Nothing for you to decide.”
That sense of inevitability pervades the movie, ratcheting up the tension and coloring the taxidermist’s actions. Darín has ample opportunity to walk away from the situation, but his refusal to do so – or even to recognize those moments of opportunity – adds force to the ending, which is as bleak as can be. For the taxidermist everything has changed, but nothing is different. Chilling stuff.
Special mention must be made of the dead man’s dog, who alone knows that Darín has disposed of his master. Easily noir’s greatest canine since Pard in High Sierra. And both of Bielinsky’s movies make reference to a shadowy figure known as “El Turco,” integral to each plot but never appearing onscreen. One can’t help but speculate that future Bielinsky films would have drawn us deeper into the Turk’s demimonde.
El Aura did not achieve Nueve Reinas’s level of exposure in the United States. It was distributed via the Independent Film Channel’s First Take series, released on demand and in theaters simultaneously. This approach makes films available to a wider audience – your correspondent saw El Aura on TV on “opening night,” a full three months before its truncated big-screen run in Seattle – but at the expense of publicity. Even being named one of 2006’s best films by The New York Times’s A.O. Scott didn’t garner El Aura additional attention.
Hollywood again made overtures to Bielinsky, but he continued to spurn them. He said it would take a different type of movie to tempt him to America. For crime dramas he would remain in his native Argentina, where he could “keep full control.” Bielinsky undoubtedly had the right idea. It’s unlikely that a studio would give him free rein to make a thriller as spare and unsettling as El Aura.
On June 26, 2006, El Aura swept Argentina’s film awards, taking home prizes for best picture, Bielinsky’s script and direction, and Darín’s performance among others. Two days later, in a hotel room in São Paulo, Brazil where he was casting a TV commercial, Fabián Bielinsky died of a heart attack at age 47, leaving behind a wife and a young son.
Two movies. That’s all we’re going to get. Considering the innate understanding of noir that Fabián Bielinsky showed, it’s nowhere near enough.
The July/August issue of the house organ (keep your snickers to yourselves) of the Film Noir Foundation hit in-boxes around the globe this morning. At an epic 33 pages, it’s no longer a newsletter but a magazine.
Including for your reading pleasure:
* An extensive interview with writer/director Arnold Laven!
* Eddie Muller’s profile of Belita, the figure skating Ice Queen of film noir!
* Philippe Garnier’s astonishing article on a pair of jailbirds who found success as screenwriters in 1930s Hollywood!
Plus, this issue of the Sentinel features the byline of yours truly not once but twice, on a survey of the Catholic noir of John Farrow and a book-versus-film comparison of Nightmare Alley.
Book: No More Heroes, by Ray Banks (UK 2008, US 2010?)
This is the third Ray Banks book I’ve touted in 2009, and the second this month. Why? Because Banks is just that good. And because the photographs that he has of me could be so easily misinterpreted by a judgmental public, various animal rights groups, and the good people at Comfort Inn and Suites.
Ex-con Cal Innes, through with the California dreamin’ of Donkey Punch (aka Sucker Punch Stateside), is back home with a new job serving evictions for Mancunian slumlord Don Plummer. When a publicity storm arises after Cal saves a young boy from a fire in one of Plummer’s deathtraps, he takes advantage by restarting his P.I. business. His first client: Plummer, desperate to know who torched his property and is threatening to do so again.
The sharply-turned, deceptively simple plot ranges the political spectrum from neo-Nazis to crunchy student protestors. But it’s the development of Cal as a character that shines. The Innes books are so closely linked that they’re practically one novel, and Banks capitalizes on the scarce daylight between them. Cal’s every decision has consequences. Many are physical; in a genre where other protagonists shake off a lead-pipe beating like a head cold, Banks makes every bruise count.
And, of course, Heroes is funny. Cal’s voice – profane, grumpy, hopeful – is one of the sharpest in crime fiction.
Beast of Burden, the last of the Innes books, is by all accounts something to look forward to. I’ve got a copy on hand, but I’m not going to dive into it. I want to pace myself.
Sort-Of Related: McQ (1974)/Harry In Your Pocket (1973)
At The Rap Sheet recently, J. Kingston Pierce linked to this clip, an annotated car chase from the shot-in-Seattle cop movie McQ.
I found it fascinating, particularly because the sequence ends on the exact spot where Rosemarie’s office now stands. It got me thinking how infrequently the Emerald City turns up in movies. Sure, there’s Sleepless in Seattle, which depicts a romantic comedy burg I don’t recognize. And Singles, capturing the city during the decade it would define. But the truth is Seattle, especially the downtown core that I seldom stray from, has an innate seediness due to its hardscrabble roots and the weather. And if you want seediness on film, you’ve got to turn back the clock to the 1970s.
McQ seems to have been spawned in a fit of municipal jealousy. It’s as if Seattle’s city fathers said, “San Francisco had Bullitt and Dirty Harry. We need a movie that showcases us a crime-infested West Coast hellhole made for tough guys, too!” John Wayne is in Eastwood mode as SPD lieutenant Lon McQ. We never learn what that’s short for, but I’m guessing McQuestionable Police Practices.
You’ve seen McQ even if you haven’t seen McQ, and I don’t mean that as a knock. You’ve got a heroic cop kicking against the suits, police corruption, lots of talk about drugs as “junk,” a flashy pimp informant. It’s the ur-cop movie, the collective unconscious as Quinn Martin Production. Director John Sturges allows us one fleeting glimpse of the Space Needle as the Duke wakes up on his boat – of course he lives on a boat – determined not to show Seattle as a forward thinking bastion but a working-class town dealing with real-world problems. Colleen Dewhurst is great as an aging junkie waitress, managing a regal grandeur as she observes that she doesn’t do skag.
Rosemarie’s Review: “This movie has some of the worst small talk I’ve ever heard.”
McQ whetted my appetite for ‘70s Seattle sleaze. Harry in Your Pocket filmed here the previous year. By all accounts the production was a big deal locally; then-mayor Wes Uhlman has a cameo as one of the many people whose wallets are lifted by ace cannon James Coburn. Coburn and his partner Walter Pidgeon, dapper and addicted to cocaine, train a pair of kids (Michael Sarrazin and Trish van Devere) to become stalls, providing the distraction that allows Coburn’s Harry to work his magic. The youngsters have an extended practice session in King Street Station, currently being restored to the let’s say glory seen in the film.
Harry is the sole feature directed by Mission: Impossible creator Bruce Geller, and it’s essentially a photo negative of that series: a team of perfectly trained individuals functions in perfect sync, not to hoodwink a Latin American dictator but relieve innocent folks of their cash. The movie presents its characters as criminals in their native habitat, and that lack of judgment is its greatest asset. Harry ultimately feels a bit insubstantial, but it possesses a breezy charm. It’s not available on DVD, but you can watch the entire film on Fancast.
Rosemarie’s Review: “This movie also stars a woman who was married to George C. Scott?”
I’ve lived in Seattle more than fifteen years, and my personal jury is still out about the place. Several reasons why are enumerated in this article, particularly #3.
It’s a question Hollywood constantly wrestles with: are stars necessary? On the one hand, of course not. On the other, as the new TV ads remind us, Depp IS Dillinger. One reason why I was able to look past The Taking of Pelham 123 being a remake of my favorite movie is that it’s a rare chance this summer to see two big personalities go through their paces. Alas, that doesn’t seem to have helped at the box office.
Bringing me to one of the best books I’ve read on the film business in years. The Star Machine focuses on the system established by the studios in their heyday to groom and maintain those in the Hollywood firmament. As the title indicates, Wesleyan professor Basinger is interested in the mechanism of stardom, so she doesn’t write about actors who would have found their way to the top without it. Instead she concentrates on talented performers who were transformed by it, like Dennis Morgan and Ann Sheridan, and on oddities who benefitted from it, such as Maria Montez and Clifton Webb.
She also offers extended case studies on those who bucked the system. Tyrone Power, a beautiful (no other word is appropriate) leading man who had the misfortune to be talented and ambitious as well. Deanna Durbin, a massive draw in the ‘30s and ‘40s who became the true Garbo when she walked away from Hollywood and America at the height of her fame. Loretta Young, whom Basinger views as a now-neglected visionary. The book closes with a section on stardom without the machine. As Basinger notes, it’s easier to achieve but harder to hang onto in the modern era, and she singles out actors who deserve more credit for the way they’ve managed their careers (Matthew McConaughey) and who would have fared every bit as well under the auspices of the studios (Sandra Bullock, who just had the best opening weekend of her career with The Proposal).
The Star Machine is actually too much of a good thing; Basinger gets so absorbed in the details of the actors’ lives that she occasionally loses the thread of her argument. But she writes with such verve and wit that I didn’t mind. It helps that I share many of her opinions. I, too, am somewhat immune to the charms of Katherine Hepburn. And I second her passionate defense of Tom Cruise.
A late footnote made me feel bad, though. Basinger laments how genre has warped the understanding of film history. Most hardcore movie fans are more familiar with Dana Andrews than Ronald Colman or even Clark Gable, for instance, because of the emphasis on noir. I can only raise my hand and say guilty as charged.
This is an odd book, and Lawrence Block lets you know that in the subtitle A Pedestrian Memoir. Not that it’s going to be commonplace; Block is incapable of producing a dull piece of writing. But it’s about walking. Specifically racewalking. Except when it’s not.
It’s a curiously reticent autobiography. Block begins an extended section on a trip during which he and his wife traced an ancient pilgrimage route by saying “it’s difficult for me to write about the Spanish walk.” He says that he writes fiction so he won’t have to reveal anything of himself directly, and when he does it’s as if he resents the intrusion.
There’s little about his career here save for a section on the creation of his strangest novel, Random Walk (which, to be fair, is about walking) and a few hints that he may not write another book. His focus, in these pages and in his life at present, is on racewalking.
Even that subject gives him pause. His concern about a book on it is “that no one but family members and indulgent friends would have much interest in reading it.” I can understand his fear. Initially, reading Step by Step reminded me of conversations I’ve had with friends after they pick up a new hobby. They do all the talking, laced with terms I don’t know and references to friends I’ve never met, and after a few moments I’m lost. (This is why I haven’t picked up a new hobby in ten years.)
But Block’s effortless style and the purity of his obsession won me over. When he explains why he’s prouder of a finish in a marathon event than anything in his entire literary career, I understood. I started to share his enthusiasm. Not enough to lace up my own sneakers, but it’s better than nothing.
Ultimately, this strangely compelling book isn’t about walking but the ebb and flow of interests in life, and how having one keeps you moving forward even when that interest is ... moving forward. Block touches on a few recent incidents that I wish he’d explored in greater detail - like his stint as a TV writer and collaborating on a movie with Wong Kar Wai – but they’re sights that we glimpse as we amble along. It’s maintaining a brisk and steady pace that counts.
For the record, if Mr. Block does decide to publish the memoir of his days in the ‘50s paperback racket that he admits he’s written a few thousand words of, I’ll snap that up at once. I know a few other people who will, too.
In 1967, France’s best secret agent – vain, spectacularly obtuse, and culturally ignorant – heads to Brazil and teams up with a beautiful Mossad colonel in pursuit of a fugitive Nazi turned lucha libre impressario with plans to start the Fifth Reich. (The fourth one didn’t work.)
The original is, in its way, a perfect thing, lampooning early ‘60s spy films in part by flawlessly recreating their look. (I’ve said it before: even the fight choreography in Cairo makes me laugh.) The sequel is bigger, broader, and sillier, but then so are the late ‘60s movies it’s satirizing. Again the era’s filmmaking is meticulously copied, with split-screens and lens flares galore. There are some sharp political barbs amidst the physical comedy. But the biggest laughs come from star Jean DuJardin and his extraordinary facial expressions.
Rio is not yet scheduled for U.S. release, which gives you a chance to watch Cairo first. The follow-up isn’t as good, but it’s still funny. The opening sequence, of DuJardin doing the twist with a chalet’s worth of lovely ladies to Dean Martin’s “Gentle on My Mind,” made me feel like a million bucks.
