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Mariano Llinás’ expansive offering, Historias Extraordinarias (2008) is another vibrant example of the intelligent and impassioned films being crafted lately by a youthful generation of Argentinian artists. Many of these Argentinian films have played to sympathetic critics and exuberant audiences on festival circuits and garnered international awards, but even so I was not prepared for Mariano Llinás’ debut feature-length effort. He and his crew eschewed the exactitude of Hi Def digital or 35mm film stocks for the rather murky and non-distinct palette of a lower resolution video look, which became a perfect metaphorical glass through which to view the world of this titles’ many segments. Historias Extraordinarias drops us off on a country dirt road where a stranger witnesses an odd event. Just what that event is becomes a fulcrum from which many other stories and characters are lifted as an adventurous gift to the viewer. Much can be said about the historical references Llinás uses to highlight the narrative chemistry of literature and storytelling itself, probably most often cited examples would be the fables of his countrymen, Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares, or perhaps even more aged reminiscences by the likes of Mark Twain. But the ambitions of these cinematic stories go beyond narrative techniques usually seen in modern film-making. Perhaps “beyond narrative techniques” is misleading. The methods used aren’t so much an evolutionary step forward, but de-evolutionary steps backward to essentials. Llinás uses very little dialogue in most of these woven tales, relying on voice-over narration, almost akin to a book-on-tape being listened to while one is watching a similar, but not exact rendering of the same story on screen. An audio/visual disjunct which so successfully snares our attention that one wonders at its amazing degree of engagement. One story will fade out for an unknown duration and we hunger for its return, though the next installment with different characters in different situations will be additively, if not addictively, as beguiling as the last. The actors function alike Bressonian adjuncts for the director to use at will, however Llinás holds the reins much looser than his French counterpart. The camera may merely reveal the back of someone’s head in shadow doing no particular action at all, while the narrator informs, feeds, tantalizes from his audio microphone the particulars and vagaries of each story. We are asked to question the limitations and advancements film has placed on narrative formation. The linear is still present (with some divergence of direction), but the unfolding is fugue-like, using characterizations, facts, clues like musical notations in time—often with no clear harmony, but always propulsing. The narrator assumes some charismatic form of leadership which places the viewer’s attention in almost total confidence, though with a hint that this unexamined enjoyment may be more quixotic and even non-rational than once expected. Where do we go, to what end? Is the journey merely a means to some quantifying resolution? Is it the only reality? Is every new story told by each new interpreter some almost molecular extrapolations of realities? Multiple tracks of sound and music seemed chosen in unusual and yet modifying patterns, adding even more clues to the mysteries unfolding. Hugely ambitious and unpredictable, each yarn keeps us occupied as if with a book in a bathtub that’s water has grown cold. We don’t think of leaving, closing the pages, grabbing a towel for warmth. We are far too engrossed in the hands of this filmic chronicle. It’s the stuff of Homer, the Mahabharata, and maybe wiley Kipling, told by a traveling vagrant around a stone-ringed fire, someone who learned it from someone who swore it was true. All captured by a camera. Oh, and here’s the song that he sang when he passed the wine.

Fantasies for the deployed working man. X, Z, and H are Sons of Man, and the narrator is Satan. If I didn’t speak Spanish, I would have put masking tape on the screen to hide the subtitles (and missed the whole point, of course). Contrary to an opinion expressed below, this film is in no way an act of guerrilla filmmaking. Using your position of authority to harangue your students into working on your film for free is not guerrilla: it’s the heroic act of a desperate and individual voice.

For some filmmakers exhaustion, discomfort and physical experience of seating through a long movie are tools that they use for achieving certain purposes. In Llinás’ film these things have no meaning. Historias Extraordinarias feels pretty short actually. The reason behind this is not just extraordinariness of stories but also the extraordinariness of storytelling. I guess the guy threw in every trick in the book (and outside of the book) he could think of here. Well, no problem, it makes a lot of sense that a film so obsessed with the performance of fiction and the wonders of it works in these ways.

Besides this ground narrative level the film works on two other ones directly linked to it as well, one about the creator of the fiction and another about the one who follows it, if you want to put it cinematically the filmmaker and the spectator. The film announces this from the very first chapter which in we see the filmmaker, playing the role of X, interfering in the objective reality of the world suggested through the use of a long static shot which is usually associated with clinical observation in contemporary cinema. Later in the hotel segments we see him interpreting it by his own means, re-ordering it through his imagination, and this time we see the same events in close-ups and medium shots. We see him constructing something logical only to be later informed by the narrator (in a very beep funny sequence) that his theory is entirely wrong. A question arises here: who is this narrator? The voice of filmmaker speaking from a point other than where he is currently standing perhaps, and even in that position the failure at capturing the truth is acknowledged through the use of two other narrators, each one revealing parts of the whole story. There is a whole another fiction/reality story is going on beyond what is seen on screen. Now is this fictional approach legitimate despite these restrictions or is it important “because” of them? Linias invites us to flip the coin and focus on the other side of it for finding the answer. When seen from a different angle than the ones above each of the stories represent a certain kind of viewing, which I won’t go on oversimplifying it as film watching can’t simply be divided to active and passive, but anyway it’s clear that Llinás is throwing the ball to the other side of the field, that he is saying that since these stories are completed only in viewer’s mind, even though what we see might only be a distortion of reality we can process it ourselves and achieve something true, and thus fiction is important, cinema too. A simple idea maybe but it’s stated powerfully.

From film’s structure I also got the idea that the director was trying to say that narrative filmmaking and other forms of storytelling are somehow similar to chess, or other carefully controlled games for that matter. The names of the people in the story (Z, H, X) probably hint at this, that instead of representing reality or individuals with solid characters of their own they are mostly pawns for filmmaker’s imagination that need to be moved accordingly. Note the unreasonably extensive amount of time X keeps the briefcase untouched in his hotel room. When I asked a friend about this he pointed out that because it suits the author’s whim for X to stay in his hotel room, that is justification enough for him to wait so long to open the briefcase. Makes sense to me!

But seriously, screw these things and enjoy the film. It is road movie, Hitchcockian thriller, love story, fantasy, comedy, epic, landscape piece, chamber drama, etc, etc. It’s totally awesome.

Jika suatu hal EXTRAORDINARY yang bisa dikatakan dari film ini, maka itu adalah bagaimana Llinas meramu cerita dan juga bagaimana dia membuka satu persatu misteri yang ada di dalam film ini. Tiga pria bernama Z, H dan X boleh dikatakan menjalani suatu misi yang masing-masing berbeda dan mempunyai kaitan erat dengan History atau sejarah. X secara tidak sengaja dan juga bodoh melibatkan dirinya pada suatu kisah kejahatan dan pembunuhan yang misterius tentang hilangnya sekoper emas dan bagaimana seorang pesakitan yang sedang dipenjara dapat bebas begitu saja untuk melakukan perampokan terhadap emas tersebut. H dibayar untuk mencari bukti otentik dan nyata akan suatu pembangunan kanal ambisius yang sedang diperdebatkan tidak akan mungkin dibuat dengan mudah. Sedangkan Z, penasaran akan sejarah orang yang sebelumnya menempati posisi pekerjaan yang dia duduki sekarang dan ditemukan tewas sendirian di kamar yang ditempati Z sekarang.

Pada satu jam pertama kita akan diajak Llinas untuk mencoba menyatukan keping demi keping puzzle yang hilang dari masing2 cerita yang sedang dijalani oleh ketiga karakter tersebut. Tetapi apa yang membuat film ini berbeda dari sekedar film “puzzling” biasanya, adalah bagaimana Llinas memperlakukan kita sebagai viewer sama bodoh atau clueless-nya dengan self-aware voice-over narrator dan ketiga karakter tersebut. Cerita dan narasi menjadi semakin kabur, tidak fokus, dan penuh kejutan seperti layaknya kehidupan sendiri. Misteri terbongkar perlahan, bukti baru dan nama baru bermunculan, tetapi bukannya misteri-misteri dan permasalahan awal yang dihadapi oleh ketiga karakter itu yang semakin jelas, melainkan kehidupan pribadi dan bagaimana mereka bisa melihat apa yang kurang dari diri mereka yang semakin jelas. Juga kita diperlihatkan bagaimana fungsi sejarah terhadap masing-masing pribadi karakter tersebut. The extraordinary stories have become their own journey, their history of lives or people revolving their lives, and the magical country Argentina. Jarang 4 jam waktu terasa begitu cepat.

Historias Extraordinarias is an intricate 4 hour tale that comprises 3 (plus 2) stories that touch on various themes and ideas, including existentialism, voyeurism, but above all, storytelling. The message is the medium. The narration is about narration, the stories are about stories, the film is about film. The result is an undeniably heartfelt assessment of and tribute to the medium of cinema and the story. It does not hurt that the four hours melt off just like that. Each story is like what television would be if it were deeper and less bureaucratically processed.Oh and plus 2 points for each sarcastic quip made by the narrators.