{"id":4593,"date":"2014-03-19T00:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T04:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=4593"},"modified":"2014-04-14T16:02:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-14T20:02:12","slug":"cria-cuervos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/cria-cuervos\/","title":{"rendered":"Cr\u00eda Cuervos: The Most Chloe Movie Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cria2\"
\n

\nCr\u00eda Cuervos<\/span><\/a><\/strong> (1976)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Written and Directed by Carlos Saura
\n110 min.<\/p>\n

Very mild spoilers ahead.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was seven, my mom made a home movie of me walking around a mulberry bush surrounded by purple and white flowers, picking them and humming to myself quietly.\u00a0 Even though I had bossed her incessantly before she hit record to follow me with the camera as I carefully timed my pauses and expressions, she did what moms in the 90’s with fanny packs and Hi-8 cameras did instead\u2014she began to narrate it in the most sarcastic, dorky voice possible: “This\u2026 is\u2026 Chloe…”<\/p>\n

At the time, I didn’t know that I was trying to direct.\u00a0 I didn’t even know what directing was, nor had the concept of moviemaking ever occurred to me. \u00a0And to this day, although I want to make movies, I haven\u2019t done anything serious\u2014I\u2019ve only been daydreaming, just as I had been doing on that day, when her seemingly oblivious voice interrupted me and made me feel embarrassment that I\u2019d been caught, and as though a special moment had been robbed of me.\u00a0 I angrily ran up to her and yelled at the camera, “Mom, erase<\/i> it! Erase it!<\/i>”<\/p>\n

My mom must not have been as oblivious as she acted though, because after that, she made our main way of interacting watching and analyzing movies together. \u00a0And she instilled in me, not just a love for movies, but a certain idealism about life that has stubbornly remained and kept me alive to this day, long after she\u2019s been gone.<\/p>\n

One might assume that it\u2019s easier to write about movies that strike us deeply in our souls.\u00a0 However, this is the most challenging piece I have ever written\u2014not because I have little to say about the film (I have so much<\/i> to say about it) but because it takes a lot of discipline not to go on and on about my entire life story over the course of explaining why I was so deeply affected by it.\u00a0 Cr\u00eda Cuervos is basically a movie about my childhood\u2014and the reason I watched it was that someone who knows me very well said, \u201cWatch Cr\u00eda Cuervos, it\u2019s the most Chloe movie ever.\u201d\u00a0 They were right\u2014I had to pause it several times in order to not blur the frames with my tears.
\n
\nI’d say that the amount I relate to the story creates bias in whether or not I can actually tell if it’s a good movie\u2014if it weren’t for how beautifully shot, lit, scored, costumed, and acted it is. \u00a0It stars Ana Torrent (a little girl at the time, though sure doesn’t act like it) and Geraldine Chaplin, who plays both the girl’s adult self and<\/i> her mother (a very clever choice expressing the child\u2019s very relatable fascination with the beauty of her mother, yet fear of\u00a0becoming her, all in one visual stroke, without ever needing to be mentioned).<\/p>\n

I first saw Geraldine Chaplin playing her own grandmother in the Chaplin<\/a> biopic many years ago.\u00a0 Her performance in it stood out to me enough that I became very curious about Charlie Chaplin’s relationship with his mother, leading to me reading his autobiographies and watching all of his films.\u00a0 It didn’t take long for me to realize that I didn’t care much for the biopic after that, but my love for Chaplin’s life and work remain\u2014he was my first introduction to not only the concept of an auteur, but to an artist that had been through a traumatic childhood similar to mine (and also similar to what Ana goes through in Cr\u00eda Cuervos).\u00a0 So it\u2019s a pretty neat coincidence that Geraldine is in it, and I\u2019m very impressed that her performance here is much more realistic than it is in Chaplin.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t so much the fact the the movie is about Ana coping with her mother\u2019s illness and death that I relate to, but the similarities in how<\/i> she copes\u2014and it is this aspect that should make the film powerful to anyone, whether they\u2019ve had traumatic childhoods or not.\u00a0 There are truths to be found here about the perspectives of children that are universal, and this is the first film I\u2019ve seen that portrays them so clearly.<\/p>\n

The most prominent coping mechanism illustrated in the film is daydreaming. \u00a0Although Ana\u2019s face\u2014with her bobbed hair, blowing in the wind, and her expressions of apathy, wonder, and determination\u2014bring to mind scenes from Miyazaki (which is impressive, because this is live action, and Spanish) nothing particularly surreal happens in the film.\u00a0 However, about half of it takes place in daydreams, and has the subtle vibe of such.\u00a0 These daydreams are her way of coping with loss\u2014by simulating the presence of her deceased mother\u2014as well as her way of escaping pain and obligation. This theme is explored so deeply and effectively (without ever being spelled out, my favorite) that we are even shown what happens when such a coping mechanism no longer works\u2014as well as when reality closely resembles the daydream, yet incorrectly<\/i>, upsetting the daydreamer.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t only the loss of her mom that she\u2019s coping with though\u2014it\u2019s the loss of an idyllic way of life that she feels was promised to her, but never received. When we are very young, we go through a time when the only influence we have on us is our parents, and although we are scared and uncertain, we trust them and allow them to build a schema of a world that is \u2018correct\u2019.\u00a0 If something happens to a parent that is out of anyone\u2019s control\u2014say, a mental and\/or physical illness\u2014a sort of contradiction occurs where, while the world they created is shattering\u2014along with them\u2014we are stubbornly holding fast to the ideals and habits they instilled in us, because they are all we know.\u00a0 The only way for this to work is to be in a sort of denial\u2014hence the daydreaming\u2014and when this denial is threatened by new caregivers trying to rewrite the parent\u2019s schema\u2014say, by trying to establish new rules and routines\u2014the child becomes unbearably rebellious.\u00a0 This is why, so often, Ana behaves coldly, and more adult than most adults, yet expresses openly the irrational desire for everyone around her to die.<\/p>\n

I remember feeling all of this as a child, and even looking and moving as she did, doing many of the other things she does in the film, such as listening to a song, over and over, in solitude.\u00a0 And I love the way that the harshness of this character differs from the usual portrayal of children coping with loss in film.\u00a0 Usually, we see too much emotion from them, as they cry, scream, or act obnoxiously creepy.\u00a0 The beauty of Ana Torrent\u2019s performance is that she is stoic.\u00a0 Instead of having facial expressions and words shoved down our throats, we simply see what she sees.\u00a0 We become the child, which treats the character with just as much respect as an adult, allowing us to take them seriously.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the film breaks the fourth wall, as though she\u2019s aware she\u2019s in a film.\u00a0 The way she occasionally looks into the camera acknowledges that she is aware she is daydreaming.\u00a0 These scenes have warmer colors, and she is in closeup, centered by the frame. By contrast, the scenes that take place in reality are shot wider, the colors cooler, as she silently observes adults behaving in negative ways towards one another.\u00a0 I think this is what life feels like to young filmmakers before they know they\u2019re filmmakers\u2014as I stated before, daydreaming is filmmaking, before we know what filmmaking is.<\/p>\n

The comforting nature of a daydream, as a coping mechanism in life, puts us in the center of our own universe\u2014but, if overused, it has the danger of making us feel like we unjustly deserve fawning praise and recognition, not only for having survived our traumas, but for constructing beautiful images privately in our own minds about them.\u00a0 If we become too absorbed by this, we develop into narcissists who simply wish<\/i> we were filmmakers, never actually becoming filmmakers at all\u2014much as I haven\u2019t yet.\u00a0 We take the child in us too seriously, and are at risk of becoming like Caden Cotard, the frustrated artist protagonist of a similarly daydream-themed film, Synecdoche New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I thought that my childhood would end up being the subject matter of my filmmaking, but I now realize that obsessing over this holds me back from expressing something new<\/i>.\u00a0 So, while Cr\u00eda Cuervos hits really close to home, it is only \u2018the most Chloe movie ever\u2019 for my life up until now\u2014the movie I needed to see in order to finally put my mom\u2019s ghost to rest, learn to cool it a little with the daydreaming, and use my creative energy towards finally actually making stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"cria2\"
\n

\nCr\u00eda Cuervos<\/span><\/a><\/strong> (1976)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/b>Written and Directed by Carlos Saura
\n110 min.<\/p>\n

Very mild spoilers ahead.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was seven, my mom made a home movie of me walking around a mulberry bush surrounded by purple and white flowers, picking them and humming to myself quietly.\u00a0 Even though I had bossed her incessantly before she hit record to follow me with the camera as I carefully timed my pauses and expressions, she did what moms in the 90’s with fanny packs and Hi-8 cameras did instead\u2014she began to narrate it in the most sarcastic, dorky voice possible: “This\u2026 is\u2026 Chloe…”<\/p>\n

At the time, I didn’t know that I was trying to direct.\u00a0 I didn’t even know what directing was, nor had the concept of moviemaking ever occurred to me. \u00a0And to this day, although I want to make movies, I haven\u2019t done anything serious\u2014I\u2019ve only been daydreaming, just as I had been doing on that day, when her seemingly oblivious voice interrupted me and made me feel embarrassment that I\u2019d been caught, and as though a special moment had been robbed of me.\u00a0 I angrily ran up to her and yelled at the camera, “Mom, erase<\/i> it! Erase it!<\/i>”<\/p>\n

My mom must not have been as oblivious as she acted though, because after that, she made our main way of interacting watching and analyzing movies together. \u00a0And she instilled in me, not just a love for movies, but a certain idealism about life that has stubbornly remained and kept me alive to this day, long after she\u2019s been gone.<\/p>\n

One might assume that it\u2019s easier to write about movies that strike us deeply in our souls.\u00a0 However, this is the most challenging piece I have ever written\u2014not because I have little to say about the film (I have so much<\/i> to say about it) but because it takes a lot of discipline not to go on and on about my entire life story over the course of explaining why I was so deeply affected by it.\u00a0 Cr\u00eda Cuervos is basically a movie about my childhood\u2014and the reason I watched it was that someone who knows me very well said, \u201cWatch Cr\u00eda Cuervos, it\u2019s the most Chloe movie ever.\u201d\u00a0 They were right\u2014I had to pause it several times in order to not blur the frames with my tears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3606],"tags":[3636,3635,3876,3875,3272,3631,3633,3632,3634,3877,104,185,768],"class_list":["post-4593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-chloes-essays","tag-caden-cotard","tag-carlos-saura","tag-chaplin-biopic","tag-chaplin-movie","tag-chloe-pelletier","tag-cria-cuervos","tag-cria-cuervos-essay","tag-cria-cuervos-review","tag-cria-curevos-analysis","tag-geraldine-chaplin","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-synecdoche-new-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4593"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4636,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593\/revisions\/4636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}