images of terror
by
Douglas Messerli
Fernando
Arrabal and Francesco Cinieri (writers), Fernando Arrabal (director) L'arbre
de Guernica (The Guernica Tree) / 1975, USA 1976
As
Roger Ebert pointed out in his 1976 review, Fernando Arrabal’s 1975 movie L’arbre
de Guernica was the first film about the Franco era actually made in Spain.
And even then, this powerful study about the early days of the Spanish Civil War
is presented more as a De Sadeian fantasia than a realist picture of the
terrible takeover of Spain which brough that country into horrific decades of
fascist rule—far longer than its neighbors Italy and Germany.
In Arrabal’s version, we see the terrible
events of Franco’s takeover from various viewpoints: including that of the
wealthy Count Cerralbo (Bento Urago), whose family for generations has demeaned,
starved, and punished the poor citizens of the small village of Villa Ramiro
and whose thuggish three nephews continue the abuse; his only son, Goya (Ron
Faber) whose major actions have been artistic interventions before he joins the
underground; the radical woman leader Vandale (Mariangela Melato) based on the
real-life Civil War hero La Pasionaria; the pacifist local school teacher, who
passionately believes in freedom, but is hesitant about the local’s abilities
to control their violence; and the wild and raucous peasants who dance out
their long frustrations and anger in various de Sade-like maneuvers.
Hardly any of these figures is free of
blame, although it is clear that Vandale and Goya, who finally meet up in
Guernica, under the Guernica Tree, a symbol of the area’s commitment to
independence and freedom, are the film’s heroes. That is, of course, the very
moment when Franco’s forces chose to bomb and kill the attendees, and as with Pablo
Picasso’s famed painting, Arrabal’s cinematic presentation reveals all the
horror of those events.
Much of this director’s presentation of “reality”
however, are revealed in a manner that one might describe as a kind of
terrifying mix of Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini (particularly Pasolini’s
Saló). The Count’s nephews attempt to rape Vandale as she rides into the
village on a donkey; she escapes by throwing a handful of vipers at them.
Small boys dance naked, girls wave flags
and sing on their way to mass. A dwarf has sex with a beautiful woman, while
around him others of his kind voyeuristically look on.
The villagers’ celebration of Guernica day
is more like a mad Mardi Gras than a recognition of what Guernica and its tree
truly represents. The elderly local woman see Vandale as a witch. The peasants’
passion for freedom results in the invasion of the Count’s estate, his wife and
servants led off to death. The Count escapes only through the good graces of
the school-teacher who hides him simply because “it is the right thing to do,”
refusing to take the money and jewels the Count offers him.
The villagers overtake the church,
desecrating most of its holy symbols, including the cross with Jesus upon it,
as they shoot it apart with guns.
But even more horrifying are the images
of their deaths after the Falange, aided by Hitler and Mussolini, take over the
small village which Arrabal has created to represent all Spanish villages.
After
a blessing by church leaders, which includes a full outright tongue-kissing
episode between the presiding priest and his male assistant, the rebels are
painfully punished with the dismembering of their testicles, numerous absurdist
shootings, and, eventually, by the dwarfs being tied to small carts who,
one by one, a well-dressed matador impales while an aristocratic audience looks
on with applause.
Let us just say that, as beautiful at
times his images are, Arrabal’s film is not an easy one to witness. But then neither
was the Spanish Civil War!
Beneath the lovely color images, the
director is comprehensibly angry, and as in Pasolini’s Saló, the degree
of the torture of human beings is commensurate to the passing of time.
No solution in this film seems totally
possible. The aristocracy and church members terrorize the villagers, the
villagers are stupidly brutal, the fascists are murderers. Even the pacifist teacher is trapped into non-action.
Arrabal’s own father was imprisoned
during the Second Spanish War, attempted suicide, and escaped from a hospital
in his pajamas, never to have been seen again. If that doesn’t make one a Surrealist,
then you’re simply unable to comprehend life.
Los
Angeles, April 17, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (April 2020).
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