Bewitching

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx

I watched Behold a Pale Horse twice in a row. It's a long movie where little action happens until the end, and there are no heroes.

Manuel Artiguez is an outlaw who has continued to fight the Spanish Civil War for twenty years after defeat, from his base in the French town of Pau. His raids appear to serve little to no purpose other than as acts of defiance. His adversary is Captain Viñolas, a venal and rather fatuous adulterer, who despite being a Catholic is as far from grace as the radical atheist Artiguez.

Nothing appears to keep the men alive except for adversarialism and antagonism. A small boy Paco, crosses the border to find Artiguez in the hope that he can inspire Artiguez to avenge his father and kill Viñolas. He sees a bull on his trip, and it's pretty clear this represents Artiguez, who knows no other course of action than to fight (and, it's hinted at, womanise). The other children have a natural reaction to Paco, seeking out Artiguez, why would you do such a thing? There are several scenes in the movie where the old revolutionaries are shown alone, interspersed with many vibrant scenes of the young healthily enjoying themselves. Artiguez and Viñolas have become rather insistent irrelevances, in a region which wants to forget the bloodshed. The two of them engaged in a savage and stupid dance of death The young priest Francisco attempts to engage with Artiguez but has little effect. He is a confused man who is only just able to tell the difference between the warmth of his own heart and the coldness of logic. He is a neophyte, although he is able to put a few good thoughts out there. The baroquerie of Lourdes, shown in the movie hardly aids the case for religion with all its fetishisations.

It is a sad movie, full of manifest failure on the part of all its participants. One of the final scenes is of several dead participants led out on mortuary trolleys, all for once profoundly equal, the tragicomedy of their lives at an end.

The rich black and white photography seems often visually allegorical in its combinations of compositions and saturations. This is particularly the case where Viñolas antagonises a bull as a picador. It is an entirely bewitching movie.

score 8/10

oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx 16 December 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3600046/