Analysis - Porque hay cosas que nunca se olvidan

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg Romanisches Seminar Sommersemester 2013 Hauptseminar aus dem Bereich der Literaturwissenschaft Narración audiovisual en el contexto latinoamericano Dozenten: Daniel Alcón-Lopez, Prof. Dr. Hermann Herlinghaus Verfasst von Ana Key H. Kapaz

Short-film analysis: Porque há cosas que nunca se olvidan (Lucas Figueroa, 2008) In this analysis of Lucas Figueroa’s short-film Porque há cosas que nunca se olvidan I will start by looking at the film scene by scene, adding my interpretation of the film’s themes, the messages it imparts and the narrative strategies it uses to do so to the end of the text. The opening theme already alludes to the film’s theme: in a parody of the Universal Studios opening theme, a huge old-style leather soccer ball substitutes the Earth and is encircled by the production company’s name, ‘LMF Films’. We hear the sound of a crowd cheering a soccer match. As the commentator voice starts to speak, the camera follows the steps of a person. The camera tilts upwards to reveal the corridor of a prison and the warder, as he stops in front of a cell behind which another officer stands. The soccer match commentator’s voice fades out as the voice-off of a character fades in speaking the exact same text. The camera pans to the left to reveal the prisoner who reads the text out loud to his cell companion. This companion stands in the foreground, behind the cell bars, framed in a medium shot wearing the classical striped prison uniform and hat. As the other prisoner finishes reading about the failed soccer attack and speaks of the player’s bad luck, the companion in the foreground turns his head to the front, nods and completes: “che se fotta”. Renato Carosone’s Chella Llá starts playing in the soundtrack. He lifts his head to inhale from an asthma pump as the camera pans back to the right, then travelling back along the corridor as the cells open and the wards order the prisoners to walk out to the field. The shot continues with a disguised cut (not meant to be seen) as the camera travels out of the building through a prison window, revealing the whole complex, with a flag of Italy in front of it. As the camera moves away from it in an aerial shot through green mountains, the opening credits are shown. The camera finally tilts up to frame the sky and freezes in it for one second before tilting back down to reveal a very different landscape, in another disguised cut. A crow sits on an electric wire. The camera moves downwards to reveal elements from the second and main setting of the film: electric wires, a light pole, an electrical box, a house, a boy sitting on a steel drum, hay bales and pitchforks, a second boy who holds another pitchfork while yelling to another two to hit the external wall of a house harder. The music stops at the first cut of the film: after a general establishment of themes and characters, the main actions of the plot are to be shown from now on. The four boys are all dressed in an Italian old-fashion look, wearing shirts with vest or pullover, caps, suspenders and shorts. Events that unfold in three days are shown in the inverse order. We



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are first presented a dialogue between two of the boys, the one yelling orders (whom I will refer to as the leader) and the one sitting on the steel drum (to whom I will refer to as the tall boy). The leader questions the tall boy’s courage as they are both framed in a medium shot. It cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot which shows the tall boy replying to him whether he was certain of his plan (which is not yet revealed). It then cuts back to the previous framing as the leader turns back to yell to the two others to keep the tempo. The camera moves up as he turns back to continue the dialogue with the sitting boy, reaffirming his intentions and asking him not to be a girl. As the camera tilts up to frame the crow on the wire in a low-angle shot, another typically Italian music starts as a flashback starts in reverse motion and the text “un giorno prima” appears on the screen animated as if it were being hand-written. The sky darkens and lights up again as the camera moves down to show the boys playing soccer. It first frames the back of the tall boy in a medium shot (1), who now stands and yells at another boy (to whom I will refer to as the short boy) to aim well so as not to miss his kick. During this action the shot is cut to its exact opposite in the axis of action (2), framing the whole action in a long shot: the tall boy on the left side, with the leader sitting on a bank at the far left of the shot with a leather ball on his lap. On the right side of the screen, the fourth boy (to whom I will refer to as the goalkeeper) stands in front of the wall he and the short boy had been hitting in the previous sequence. A ball wrapped in a cloth secured with a piece of rope stands on the ground in the center of the shot. The short boy comes into the shot from the left, kicking the ball. It cuts to frame the goalkeeper in a medium lateral shot (3), who jumps towards the camera but does not stop the ball. Back to framing number 2, the short boy starts celebrating saying “gol!” as the shot is cut to framing 1 and the tall boy run towards him to celebrate. They hug and jump around singing they’re the Italian champions. It then cuts to a medium close-up of the leader sitting in the corner, and as he watches the other two celebrate, he inserts a black cable into the leather ball on his lap – it cuts to a close-up of the ball with the cable. It then cuts back to framing 2, with an insert of a closer framing of the two boys who go on celebrating, as the goal keeper says he won’t play anymore. Cut to framing 3 as he angrily throws the ball against the wall and says they will now play goal shooting. It cuts to a ground-level closeup of the ball, as a foot stops its movement the music ends. The second game starts: the kicker is now the tall boy. The three players start counting and taking turns in kicking the ball, as the leader goes on watching. The shots are alternated between medium long shots of the group, medium shots of the boys kicking the ball and close-ups of the ball hitting the wall. After hitting the third kick, the short boy is framed in a close-up as he turns to the leader to ask him why he won’t play. He replies that that ball hurts his feet, framed on the right side of the screen in a medium shot, with a big electric cable reel – from where the cable he inserts into the leather ball is coming – on the left side. The tall boy teases him and then hits the fourth kick, after which his foot hurts. As he complains, the leader calls him a girl. In a medium long shot framing the three players, the goalkeeper hits the fifth kick and the ball flies towards the camera, fading the scene to black.



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The camera moves in a lateral travelling to now reveal the internal setting of a living room where an old wooden radio plays Verdi’s La Donna è Mobile from Rigoletto, as an old woman sits on a rocking chair knitting. We also hear loud thump sounds of the ball hitting the exterior of the house and the squeaking of the chair. The portraits hanging on a wall behind the old woman shake with the thumps as she is framed with them in a medium shot. It cuts to a close-up of the chair’s foot as she stops, cutting then to a high-angle shot as she turns to look at the wall. No thump is heard for some seconds, but as it restarts she turns even more towards the wall, as the portraits shake even more. She resumes her rocking chair movement and her tricot trying to ignore it, but the thumping persists. The camera moves towards the window, the only source of light in the room, and as it crosses to the outside, the song continues as non-diegetic music that accompanies the reverse fast motion which transports the narrative back yet another day (announced by the text “due giorni prima” on the screen). The reverse motion ends with the leader holding the leather ball and kissing it, and as it cuts to a close-up shot of his feet on the ground, he places the ball and the music ends. He is framed in a medium shot as he asks the short boy, who is about to kick, to be careful as he saved money for a whole year to buy the leather ball. It cuts to a close-up of the short boy, who bares an afflicted expression on his face. As the leader explains how to kick the ball – in the middle and not below it – a sad-sounding soundtrack is heard: Ennio Morricone’s Mandolini e Chitarre from the soundtrack of Gente di Respetto (1975). The fear of the short boy is shown and enhanced through the cuts between the leader giving such orders while standing just beside him, a close-up of the foot and the ball with the goal keeper in the background, the keeper preparing himself, and a zoom from a middle shot to a close-up of the short boy, who frowns in insecurity, as opposed to the goal keeper, shown in a middle-shot with his hands up, with harsh light cast on him from above, forming very definite shadows of both his arms on the wall, as if he had not two, but four arms – the fear of any player about to kick the ball. As the other boys pressure him to kick, the short boy is shown in close-ups by himself, isolated from the rest. The keeper instead is shown with the tall boy sitting on the background of the shot. As he is about to kick, extreme close-ups of his eyes are followed by close-ups of the keeper, facing each other as if in a Western movie cowboys encounter – the cuts are synchronized with the sound of timpani strikes, enhancing the drama of the scene. The shots get progressively shorter as the dynamic of the timpani grows harder – stronger strikes –, culminating in the run for the kick, before which the soundtrack music stops as the kick is accompanied by a roll on the timpani and a final strong strike as the ball flies high and above all of the boys. The music that follows immediately after it creates a sort of tragic suspense – many strings and wind instruments together in a crescendo – as the shots each boy looks up to see where the ball went. The timpani roll returns as the ball finally hits the pointy edges of the railings outside the old woman’s house. The slightly high-angle shot and the hard light cast on the railings give them a look of aligned spears on which the ball falls helpless, as the sign with the street name reads “Via del Calvario”, an allusion to the way towards the crucifixion and suffering of Christ in the events that are about to unfold. The ball however finally falls intact



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on a vase inside the old lady’s front yard, its movements followed by the boys. As the music approaches an end, the vase finally falls down and breaks, a sound to which the old lady reacts inside the house, first turning her face and later standing up from her rocking chair. The short boy is by then already in front of the house, pictured in a close-up behind the railings as he tries to reach the ball with a broom, with no success. It cuts to a lateral shot of him as the other boys approach the scene, with the statue of a guard dog inside the old lady’s yard in the foreground. He is asked to take the broom back, as the old lady – “la vecchia” – is coming. As she steps out, they are all lined up outside of the house. The leader asks her kindly to return the ball and promises they will no longer play. She unwillingly nods, picking up the ball as the boys watch her. As she hands it to the leader and he is already thanking her, she suddenly takes it back and, as the music changes into a faster rhythm, she aggressively starts stabbing the ball with her tricot needles. The sound of the stabs is enhanced and the boys watch with despair, from outside the railings, helpless. The music gives the scene a certain humor, despite the aggressive, unstoppable stabbing and the final squeeze she gives the ball to empty it completely. The squeeze is accompanied by its funny typical sound as the air comes out, followed by another timpani roll as she finally throws the ball over the railings. The deflated ball falls flat on the street, without bouncing, as the music ends, the last note echoing for a few seconds as the leader kneels beside the ball. The ground-level shot shows him taking the ball in his hands as the other boys surround him, only their legs being shown. In despair, he starts asking why (“perché?!”), as the old lady is shown in slow-motion going back in, turning her head with an expression of satisfaction and a sadistic smile as Lucio Dalla’s Caruso starts playing. The leader is framed from inside the yard, turning his head to the old lady, with a desperate expression and close to crying. He goes on asking louder and louder, it cuts to a medium shot showing only him holding the ball, and finally to a bird’s eye shot which zooms out from a close-up of him looking up, crying and asking “perché?” to the sky, perhaps to God – and looking therefore at the camera –, to a long shot of the street. The screen finally fadesout as the lyrics of Caruso start being sung and the film’s title appears on a black screen, in Italian and in the handwriting used in the previous on-screen texts. The next scene fades-in as the music continues: we first see some shots of the street, the house, the roofs with the cloudy sky in the background, a hay bale and a bright green ladder leaning on a wall, and the camera tilts up to reveal a flag of Italy tied up in a terrace railing. We start hearing the leader yelling orders for the other boys to hit the wall stronger: we’re back to the scene from the start. The first sequence is shown again from another angle – first a 14 seconds long sequence shot of the leader and the tall boy talking as the camera moves towards them and around the leader, cutting to over-the-shoulder shots/reverse shots as they discuss the plan they’re about to carry out – the tall boy is slightly doubtful as the leader, very much convinced of it, hands him two wooden clothespins, shown in a close-up of their hands. As the dialogue is over, a new soundtrack music starts – a light, playful tune –, which cues us to believe they’re up to mischief. The leader is framed in a medium close-up as he walks away from the tall boy and towards the old



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lady’s house. The dolly shot accompanies his movement. In the background, the tall boy stands up on the steel drum. The following shots are edited according to the music and in sync with it: closeups of the broom and a foot hitting the external wall, the old lady inside the house on the rocking chair, knitting almost compulsively trying to ignore the noise, close-ups of her brown house slipper pushing the floor to rock the chair, of the chair’s foot moving as it rocks, of her hands knitting and the portraits shaking on the wall. The tune’s tempo accelerates as the shots get shorter and shorter, some shown in fast-motion, progressing into a fast cutting that at the same time enhances the persistence of both sides – the boys’ in annoying the old lady and the old lady’s in ignoring them – and cues us to believe a final confrontation is about to take place. The leader finally makes a signal for the two to stop as he positions himself outside the house, “armed” with his wooden pitchfork. As the two sit on the floor and wait, the leader starts breaking the statues in the old lady’s yard: happy smiling gnomes, an angel that ornaments the sign “Dio bendica la pace di questa casa”, and finally the guard dog’s head. As he takes the pitchfork out and throws it on the street, the two boys sit outside laughing. The tune ends. The leader starts ringing the house bell without stopping – he is shown in a medium close-up behind the railings, staring at the house door with a serious yet smart expression. It cuts to a close-up of his hand pressing the bell (the camera is now outside the house) as the door starts to open in the background, then to a more open medium shot (still having the camera positioned outside the house) of his back as he goes on pressing the bell. The old lady comes out, cutting to a close-up of her cynical expression and smile as she looks at the boy. The leader goes on ringing the bell, looking back at her. She looks up at the bell, as he keeps on ringing, and her smile resists fading from her expression. As she looks back at him with a hint of contempt, he is framed in a medium shot behind the railings (4). The old lady, holding her knit and needles, occupies almost half of the screen as he is shown in the other half, standing outside ringing the bell and confronting her fearlessly, with the same serious expression. He finally stops and asks her politely for the ball. As she looks down, a close-up shows the ball on the floor, among the wrecks of the guard dog statue. The tune from the previous encounter with the old lady starts to play again. He once again says they promise not to trouble her anymore. Her cynical smile appears again as she steps down to take the ball. As she picks it up, we can see the cable he’d been pushing into it, as he asks her not to pop it again. The old lady is now shown in a frontal close-up, holding the needles up on the right hand and looking down at the ball on the other hand (off-screen). It cuts back to framing 4, but now the leader is holding the railings and looking at her with a slight smile, expecting his reverse psychology to work. It cuts to a closeup of the tall boy beside the electricity box, looking at the scene from the distance. The timpani roll sounds once again as the old lady prepares her stab, the leader eagerly waiting for her to do so. She pops the ball with the needles once again, and in the third stab she stops, the leader yells for the tall boy to do it now. The old lady, puzzled, finally sees the cable coming out of the ball. The fourth movement from Dvořák’s Symphony nº 9 - From the New World starts to play, the ostinato accompanies the camera movement which follows the cable from the ball, out of the house and up



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to the electrical box, growing into a higher pitch and faster tempo as the camera approaches the electrical box. As the old lady looks at it, the leader yells for the tall boy to do it immediately and, as he finally places the two pegs in the electric poles, the music pauses as he is expelled into the air by the powerful electric current. The old lady starts shaking and screaming from the electric shock, as she cannot let go the two needles still pierced into the ball. The tall boy falls on a hay bale, his hairs lose as the cap flew away. The old lady’s hair stands upright with the electricity as she goes on screaming. In a shot framed from behind the hay bale, the tall boy sits up as the other two run towards him to ask if he is ok. They help him up and the three run to the old lady’s house. It cuts to a high-angle shot of the old lady as she goes on shaking, screaming and unable to let go of the needles and the ball. She finally falls, as it cuts to framing number 4 once again, the leader observing her apparently unaffected. The music is replaced by another tune. The boys approach him, shown in the background of a close-up of the old lady’s hand, still shaking and holding the needles. The camera travels among the wrecks of the statues and the four boys’ faces as they look at her, alternating between both. The camera finally reaches the old lady lying on the steps and as she stops shaking, the music ends. The tall boy turns to the leader and says they have killed her. After a split second of pondering, the leader replies: “che se fotta”, taking a breath and then inhaling from his asthma pump. It cuts to black and the final credits start. The black screen is split in the horizontal after the first credits, and in the upper half we see the legs of the four boys as they run away from the “scene of the crime”, after which the black crow falls dead on the street, electrified. The epilogue is then introduced, as a professional, modern soccer ball is placed on a field. A man prepares to kick, staring at the goal. The goal keeper looks completely unaffected and not at all worried, leaning on the post, then walking to the other side. The kicker wears a sweatshirt and is fat, as opposed to the keeper, who is fit and wears a complete and professionallooking training outfit. It is now thirty years later, and the same lines from previous scenes let us know these are the leader and the short boy, now as grown-ups – the leader is the short boy’s personal trainer as he remains lazy and insecure. He explains once again how to kick the ball in the middle and not on the bottom, as these are “things you never forget” – we have the film’s title – to which the short boy replies he cannot do it. After a few shots to create some suspense, he finally runs to kick, and as expected, once again kicks the ball far up in the sky. The end. Figueroa’s film is in spoken in Italian and set in Italy, but the director is Argentinean and the film was actually shot in Spain. He chose a subject that is universal – soccer – which almost any spectator in the world can understand and relate to. To this central theme, Figueroa relates secondary ones: mischief, childhood friendships, the problematic coexistence of the boys and an old lady, and of course, revenge. Soccer is somehow in the center of everything: in the opening credits, a ball replaces the world itself; the scene which shows the leader’s reaction to the stabbing of the ball is so tragic that the ball could easily be replaced by a dead body in his arms; for stabbing the ball and depriving the boys from soccer, the old lady ends up paying with her life;



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thirty years later, the still clumsy short-boy insists on training and learning how to kick the ball properly. In order to tell the story, Figueroa exaggerates some narrative elements through classic film clichés: the kneeling on the street crying and yelling up to the sky; the shot/reverse shot sequence starting with long shots and ending with close-ups, as two characters face each other in a duel, often used in Westerns; the use of slow-motion and drum roll at the verge of a suspense climax; the choice of dramatic and monumental soundtrack to provoke emotional reactions. To these clichés, the director adds two main elements of surprise embedded in dark humor: the old lady stabbing the ball before giving it back and the boys taking revenge by electrifying her. These reactions would likely be the extremes each side would take in reality: the greatest wish of an old lady being pestered by four boys playing soccer would be to somehow get rid of the ball; and the four boys’ reaction to a mean old lady who wishes them to stop playing and pestering her would be to get rid of her in some way. That these events would actually unfold in real life is unlikely, and if so would be tragic, but film allows them not only to take place but for the spectator to react to them unlike he or she would in real life: with humor. Another very important element is the soundtrack. Renato Carosone’s Chella Llá accompanies the transition between the prologue scene in prison and the main setting on the streets. The music, sung in Neapolitan, speaks of a love that kept him imprisoned and from which he freed himself, and while enjoying his freedom he sees the skies more blue, the sun shines more etc. This song in this part of the film seems to have a double meaning: the imprisoned men, although deprived from freedom, are somehow free and united in their passion for soccer (they leave their dark cells in order to go outside into the field, where the sun shines on the blue sky, and we see them hugging each other as they meet in the corridor). The camera flies away from the prison, throughout the blue skies and green scenery, and arrives in a very different setting where soccer is present, and is also a passion. In a broader sense, it is the passion for soccer that unites Italians. Rigoletto’s La donna è mobile, played in the radio of the old lady, the only female character in the film, talks about the instability of female behavior, an ironic approach to the character of the old lady, who sits in her house trying to ignore the noise and mess, seems to be willing to return the ball and suddenly snaps and aggressively stabs it. Going further into sexist stereotypes, the female figure is often seen and portrayed as the main “competitor” for men’s attention when it comes to watching and playing soccer, and even if Figueroa’s film is not about lovers, the choice of an old lady (and not an old man) works best in creating the main conflict, especially in a film set in Italy, a very patriarchal and sexist country – in order to provoke and offend the other boys, the leader says they are behaving like girls, for instance. Lucio Dalla’s Caruso, composed in dedication to the Italian famous tenor Enrico Caruso, speaks of the parting of two lovers as one of them is dying in the other’s arms. Played as the leader holds the stabbed, empty ball in his hands, it creates the mood of parting between him and his beloved ball which he holds dead in his arms, asking to the skies why – an exaggeration of the theme of loss of the



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beloved one, which in the life of an eight-year-old boy is his most precious possession: a professional soccer ball he saved money during a whole year to buy. The shots that follow this “loss” show empty places, a flower and the darkening skies, all typical elements of loss and mourning as the song’s tragic melody evokes grief. The fourth and last movement of Dvořák’s Symphony nº 9 - From the New World, a monumental closure of the composer’s most famous symphony, accompanies the boys’ revenge plan being put into practice and the resulting “defeat of the enemy”, as the old lady drops dead, electrified as a result of having stabbed her knitting needle in the ball connected with the electrical box on the street. The song played during the end credits is Renato Carosone’s version of Bob Merrill’s Mambo Italiano, originally recorded by Rosemary Clooney in 1954. The original version tells of a boy who went back to Napoli because he missed the scenery and the local dances, only to find out they now dance Italian mambo. In Carosone’s version (recorder one year later) a Neapolitan went back after ten years living in Brooklyn dancing the mambo like an Italian. Carosone has inserted parts from other classic Neapolitan songs, perhaps as homage to Napoli and its culture and language in the globalized world, where dialects and regional cultures tend to either vanish or turn into shallow, often false stereotypes. The two grown-up boys in the epilogue have grown into more international figures, wearing professional sport outfits, using an Adidas soccer ball and playing in a soccer field that could be located anywhere in the world. And what are “the things you never forget” from the title? The way you should kick the ball in the middle, not on the bottom of it? Childhood friendships? Soccer games played in the street? The pain the old lady inflicted them? The revenge they carefully planed and carried out? I would say a bit of everything.



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