Casas Muertas
(Canada/Venezuela/Ecuador, 83 min.)
Dir. Rosana Matecki
Programme: Canadian Spectrum (World premiere)
More than seven million Venezuelans have fled their homeland in recent years as a direct result of the country’s political, social, and economic turmoil. The root causes of the current crisis date back to the authoritarian rule of President Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s and continue with the equally repressive regime of Nicolás Maduro. The country has endured hyperinflation, extreme poverty, and rising rates of disease and crime.
Casas Muertas focuses on those who remain. These are individuals who either do not have the funds to escape or whose convictions prevent them from leaving. Each person has a private reason to stay and to fight for justice by whatever means at their disposal. Their continued presence is an act of defiance.
In Casas Muertas, filmmaker Rosana Matecki uses a structural ripple affect, lyrically weaving singular yet connected portraits within the larger portrait of her native country. She focuses on four individuals and their personal struggles. She creates intimate views of people who are living with the deep pain that can only come out of such oppressive circumstances. They cling to their memories of better times, some with the hope that they will one day be restored. The film is infused with a profound melancholy as each person remains steadfastly devoted to a lost way of life.
The common denominator is that their lives are filled with ghosts. The suffering is palpable and spans generations. For example, Juan Pablo was killed at age 24 during the 2017 protests in Caracas. His parents, Elvira and Gregorio, stay in Venezuela to keep his memory alive and to continue this his fight for justice.
Darwin is the youngest son in a family that was forced to flee after his brother was shot and killed outside their home. His immediate concern was that his mother escape danger and flee the country. Now he’s alone, struggling to live each day with enough food to eat. He works tirelessly to try to make enough money to leave the country as well.
Isabel, an elderly matriarch, watched as government engineers flooded her beloved hometown of Potosi. Forced to leave as the water rose to her knees, she tends to it still, watching over it with the faith that one day this community will again come alive. Isabel boasts of the church steeple that rises proudly from beneath the water, recalling how the workers tried to blow it up only to fail. She marvels at how it still stands, “like a miracle.”
Jesús, a trained accountant who can’t find work, also functions as a caretaker. Since his neighbour fled overseas, Jesús tends to the man’s house, living each day with uncertainty, knowing that at any time his friend might return and reclaim it. This is the only home that Jesús has. Each person in this film lives in frightful poverty and suffers from extreme isolation. They speak candidly about their loneliness.
The title of the film, Casas Muertas, which translates to “dead houses,” is inspired by a 1955 novel of the same name by Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva. This term (and image) acts as a metaphor for the individuals into whose lives we are invited. They are mere shells, continuing to stand, but just barely functioning. Their purpose in life is frozen in time, they exist but they do not thrive.
Matecki is careful to construct a pattern of imagery that informs each person’s situation. She keeps her camera in tight close up during their intimate confessions. Otherwise, the camera roves over the decrepit buildings and ruins, exploring the subjects in their context. It goes in disturbingly close but also pans out in wide shots to reveal a greater sense of squalor. In crafting the montages, she creates a haunting rhythm in which houses are captured in their rundown state throughout the film. These rhythms are established right from the start as Matecki homes in on reflections of Isabel’s beloved steeple reflected in the water.
Although this is arguably the most striking image in the film, and the filmmaker echoes its poetic power by inserting the stillest of shots of the various landscapes repeatedly throughout the film. A recurring motif involves shots where the slightest of breezes gently ripples across water or grass. In this way she conjures the traditional association of nature as a place of healing, a refuge, with its luscious greens, bright sunshine and chirping sounds. These images function in symbolic ways: the reflection of the drowned church’s steeple looks so pretty in the water until the camera pans up to reveal it in context of the underwater town.
Piercing and poetic, Casas Meurtas lyrically renders both a spirit of resistance and the resilience of a people who refuse to give up. The documentary is in itself an act of disobedience. Matecki’s methodology manifests an enticing otherworldly quality in this portrait of determination. It’s a film that functions in many ways: as an elegy for the dead souls lost to the authoritarian regimes, as an act of mourning, as a cry for justice, and as a prayer for the future.
