Lisandro Alonso
- Opens with a sublimely beautiful shot of the camera exploring trees in some wilderness, occasionally going out of focus, generating a dream-like effect. Two (?) bodies of children are briefly seen.
- Vargas begins his journey in the boat, but briefly hesitates (he disembarks from the boat and heads back to the shore, hesitates and then decides to continue anyways). Is he afraid of himself, of his inherent primitivism, that has killed once and can kill again? (Or did he, perhaps, want to kill the fisherman who gave him the boat?) Was the first scene really the end of the film? (Alonso’s use of ‘opening credits’-like closing-credits insinuate at that).
- Vargas' primitive instincts are alive when he is freed from jaill – in his love for his daughter, in his interaction with the hive, in his killing of the goat, etc. His peculiarities include his walk, his manner of washing his face head downwards and and his cluelessness about his daughter’s possible age (buying candies without realizing that she would be much older).
- Camera used as a dramatic element in the long shot of Vargas rowing and receding from the scene, eventually disappearing, with the camera taking a life of its own, moving deliberately, with a rower’s exertion, in the opposition direction and, eventually, away from him (with only the sound of wilderness and Vargas' rowing in the background). The very same exertion returns at the very last scene of the film when the camera remains intently focussed on the toys (with incomprehensible sounds of slashing in the background). Is it the children, the goat, or himself (or just the audience) ?
- Beautiful, long expressions of "stillness" with sudden disturbances (reminded me of fade-out to black narrative ellipses in Kieslowski's Trois Couleurs: Bleu )
- Relationship between nature and the human race, and the inherent, but latent, violence in both. The hive, the constant sound of bees/flies are indicative of nature's intense upredictability. Unpredictability exists in us all.
- There is a beautiful part in the film when Vargas gets rid of his shirt (he has also got rid of most of his money), and we now find him dressed akin to his grandson. It is him coming home and accepting that he is now home. Previously, Alonso shows how Vargas is retracing many steps of his past (undoubtedly spent in the jungle), and his meeting his grandson brings a finality to his new found freedom.