A World without Narration (Political Investigation)

Abstract

An odd, tacit division of labor seems to have arisen in film during the 1990s: with few exceptions, the political (in the classical sense of the word) was allocated to documentaries, and fiction films tended to avoid it. Very few movies (Garage Olimpo, Los rubios, Mala época) were concerned with mixing both worlds and with asking how fiction can represent political events.¹ Despite their differences, documentaries and fiction films coincide in the fact that the incitement to political action is linked to the past. This has meant that the status of the political in the new Argentine cinema has provoked a certain perplexity. Horacio González affirms:

El bonaerense touches upon all of these themes and takes care to remain within the realm of petty crime organized in police stations, in a phase of pre-political initiation. Thus it easily fulfills what eventually has been celebrated in these films: the lack of judgment or, as it is said, “preaching to the audience [bajar la línea].”

Of course, this is a more profound problem that cannot be resolved by the voluntary resignation of indictment that underlies (should underlie) any artistic or political venture. But it is clear than a style that decides to put in voluntary suspense the immediate judgment of themes that contemporary debate charges with values decided “beforehand” (with respect to political violence, ostensibly), should reinstate with adequate artistic means the power that fiction always has: that of perceiving the values that make public space possible. Once the famous objection of “preaching to the audience” has been avoided, one has to show that art can, in itself, carry all the burden of its own truth. (González 2003, my emphasis)