Leaves rustle in the wind, sand swiftly lifted from the ground as it resumes its nomadic journey, taking from one place to give to another. Around it, all seems to be consumed by stillness, but, in the safety of this deceiving quietness, life bursts through settled roots to create anew. Within the fertile ground stands a house where a family mirrors the same steady rhythms of the crops, opting for the comfort of the roots over the impermanence of the sand.
This tide remains in perfect balance until it doesn’t, cataclysmic shifts unforgivingly hitting the idyllic island created by the Solé family. The son of the original owner of the land where the family resides promptly negotiates the sale of the plot after the death of his father. Rogelio (Josep Abad), the Solé patriarch, has his hands tied – he has no papers to prove ownership of the land. “There is no contract. Old Pyniol gave me his word, just like his father to my father”, exclaims the man in exasperation as his children gather around a useless stack of papers. This summer, it seems, will be the last amongst the pear trees for the Solé clan.
Catalan director Carla Simón returns to the melancholic countryside musings of her directorial debut, 2017’s “Summer 1993” – which also premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival – to tell the story of a traditional family confronted with the daunting prospects of change in her sophomore feature and now Golden Bear winner, “Alcarràs”. While Simón’s first film focused on the world seen through the eyes of one central character, a child dealing with the inscrutable reality of grief, her newest endeavor is a patchwork of differing yet parallel perspectives.
Out of the incipient tree that is Rogelio, come two main branches: Qumet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) and Glòria (Berta Pipó). Out of the two, yet more sprawling shrubbery, from moody teenagers to cheeky toddlers, the farmhouse a roaring pressure cooker always at the brink of eruption, be it from the joy of shared laughter or the strain of heightened arguments. At the Solé household, there is little point in trying to conceal frustration, all quarrels ultimately brought to a passionate, cacophonous public forum.
Simón envelops her characters in unfettered tenderness, which she extends to the portrayal of the spaces that surround them. A wife massages the hardened back of her husband, harnessing the warm vapor exuding from the bath where their young daughter splashes water away. The mother sings softly as the girl echoes the words of the chorus; as the camera pans out, we see the enclosed space become even smaller by the presence of a teenager carefully painting her nails baby blue. When the night falls, the kids gather by a wooden table hidden amongst luscious bushes in the corner of the patio, a single source of light making their homework legible. As the young ones tinker, their grandfather sits nearby, his attentive eyes contemplating all the life he has helped create, be it in the shape of fruits or weans.
It takes only stepping away from their small haven for the family to realize it is not only their world that is drastically mutating. In the city center, a group of African laborers gathers by crumbling steps, awaiting work that is scarcer and scarcer by the day; at the cooperative, farmers articulate their expanding grievances against the powers that insist on devaluing their produce, directly threatening their livelihood; the new generation, confronted with the impending obsoletism of the practice they were destined for all their lives, becomes nifty, hiding weed seeds amongst the fruit trees and learning early how to care for a solar panel, the clear future of the region.
The clash between old and new permeates the entirety of “Alcarràs”. Young kids play inside a rusty car that has most likely not worked since before they were born; an old man tends carefully to infant peaches, twirling the firm fruits on his wrinkled hands; teenagers dance to the throbbing beats of modern music on ancient cobbled streets. This dichotomy, often made beautiful through its poignant grasp of the cadency of time, is also cruel in the oceans that it places between people, burning bridges with the all-engulfing flames of resentment.
In its expert blend of vivid cinematography and naturalistic performances, “Alcarràs” creates a refined study of heritage that understands life’s permanent absence of resolution – with every hard-earned answer comes a new riddle. Simón honors the lives of her characters by allowing them to exist in a reality that is created not to serve a narrative but to pay homage to the people and the places that have shaped the director as a person and as a filmmaker. In this, it is only fitting that the film bids farewell without so much of a conclusion as an invitation to stay with these people, to take life as it comes, in the calm immensity of its woes and its joys. [A-]
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