Jarama
2017 · 14m
Directed by Alberto Pla
Genres: biography, historical, war
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A musician and Republican soldier and the Irish writer and Brigadista Charles Donnelly in the Battle of Jarama, where both lose their lives, in a homage to the International Brigades.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A respectful historical elegy about dead communists—exactly the kind of consensus-pleasing artifact that festivals love and I usually avoid, though Pla's restraint borders on perverse enough that it almost works as anti-hagiography.
Pla's formal approach to the Jarama tragedy locates itself squarely in the tradition of Republican cinema and European historical dignity, where the melancholic pacing and considered framing honor both the historical record and the formal grammar of remembrance.
The film's singular lift is how Pla uses silence and negative space around the musician's voice—the decision to let absence do more work than explanation gives this modest-scale production the weight of something architecturally considered.