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The legacy of colonialism gets sliced for sandwiches in the new Argentine film Zama (in case any of us had lingering doubts about the poisoned way it’s shaped civilization). It’s a subject for outraged mockery that never quite goes out of fashion. In fact, a gimlet-eyed period piece like Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, seems to have a renewed pertinence as neocolonialist globalism marches on in the face of refugee cataracts, catastrophic health crises, and political instability. The 500-year-long imprint of colonial depredations is still with us, rippling out in ways that are both inherent in history and newborn in the 21st century.
Martel bakes this sense of things into her film, adapted from a seminal novel of the same name on mid-century Argentine modernism by Antonio di Benedetto. The book, virtually unknown in the English-speaking world before a translation was published in 2016, conjoins anti-colonial politics with an existentialism in the tradition of Camus and Beckett, a vibe Martel zeroes in on with laser focus.
It’s the late 1700s, somewhere in some unnamed South American wilderness occupied by the Spanish, and we’re at the sea’s edge with the uniformed Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a colonial functionary (corregidor) now stranded on the edge of the empire and far from his home and family.
From the outset he is a dour, haunted man, a lonely, xenophobic lost one already poisoned by the white man’s burden. Whether he’s confronted with undressed natives or scheming Spaniards, he struggles to understand everyone, gazing at the oppressive social dynamics around him in a frustrated daze.
His primary ambition soon becomes to be sent back to “civilization,” but time passes (a native child he’s fathered appears at one point, much to his chagrin). As the plague starts felling Europeans, Zama only gets farther and farther from completing his mysterious assignment. An existential dilemma takes hold: he’s caught in the colonial clockwork as if in a dream of climbing an Escherian stairwell never getting anywhere. (He’s horny-lonely, too, and comically never seems able to satisfy himself.)
His worthless authority is a mockery. His servant seems to be the actual bureaucrat, succeeding socially where Zama fails, while other nobles treat him like an employee who doesn’t yet know he’s fired. Even the natives act like they know something he doesn’t. Meanwhile, Martel limns the racialized context of this internal crisis with scathing details: native slaves carry lazy Spaniards on their backs, and the territorial governor plays backgammon for human ears.
This is Martel’s first work of historical fiction, and Zama is only her fourth feature (and her first in nine years). Like her earlier films, Zama is distinguished by unorthodox compositions and hyperrealist visuals. As was clear in her first film, La Cienega (2002), Martel’s distinctive vision of the world is like a spy holding her breath lest she be discovered. Her camera rarely moves, preferring to catch action in fragments, watching through objects and furniture and half-open doors. The effect is rather Zama-like, leaving us not quite getting the whole picture, though of course in reality we see more than enough. You’re not omniscient watching Martel’s movies, but wander with uncertainty through a landscape of damage and sin. We are never sure if what’s really important remains unseen.
Given its raw materials, Zama is a step sideways for Martel, whose other films (including 2004’s The Holy Girl and 2008’s The Headless Woman) are scarifying analyses of modern Argentine bourgeoisie. Zama is also Martel’s first film about a man, perhaps a factor of taking on the colonialist past. In the lead, Gimenez Cacho is the personification of a weaselly, soul-crushed advantage-seeker (you can imagine him breaking little rules in order to retain his shaky position in the Trump White House). His resting face a hangdog mask of primal disappointment with the world, Zama is only sympathetic because his attempts to manipulate state bureaucracy to his benefit fail so miserably again and again. Once he becomes literally lost in the wilderness of empire, he’s virtually a zombie, no longer a European but another piece of expendable wildlife in the untamed landscape.
Martel’s movie plays like a toast-dry comedy for some viewers, but like much of Beckett, it’s too chilling and resonant to to be really chuckle-worthy. It’s already one of 2018's best and most haunting films, and a lashing indictment of colonialist hubris.
Michael Atkinson is a writer, poet and film critic. His latest book is the novel Hemingway Cutthroat.