Analyse And Discuss The Representation Of The Past In Kamchatka

Marcelo Piñeyro's 2002 film Kamchatka is a melodrama with a narrow narrative focus that seeks to portray the impact of the Argentine Dictatorship of the 1970s on the lives of an unnamed middle-class family. It does so in the form of what Tal dubs a 'largo flashback' through the narration of the family's oldest son, whose assumed name is Harry and whose 'child's gaze' narration perhaps lends his view of this tragic past a higher importance. The film's representation of the past undoubtedly conforms, as David Foster argues, to a number of bourgeois norms that fit the stereotypical aesthetic of a melodrama, despite a poignant and memorable finale in which the parents presumably sacrifice themselves to save their children. And, whilst the film's conclusion is emotionally powerful, the depiction of the past in Kamchatka is too often restricted to certain temporal spaces (which might be called time capsules or lost paradises) within a highly conventional narrative that fails to fully incorporate the realities of Dictatorship Argentina into its use of a potent but unfulfilled child's gaze. Thus, representations of the past here often lack clarity or real narrative meaning, though there is a credible effort to link past and present Argentine problems together at some points in the film. With this potential argument laid out, it is perhaps important to clarify how an analysis of these filmic representations will be achieved. For although Kamchatka is set in the past - a caption in the opening minutes reads '1976: días despues del golpe militar' - it is arguably not ostensibly about the past. Rather than a grand historical narrative or a depiction of wider social or national contexts, it is, as mentioned, a melodramatic narrative with a narrow, middle-class focus, for the most part limited to a handful of locations and a handful of characters. As Susan Hayward makes clear, this way of framing 'classical narrative' is usually 'a means of reproducing the real-world, one which the spectator can either identify with or consider to be within the realms of possibility'. In a melodramatic context, Hayward also argues, this means the focus will be 'essentially on the family and moral values'. Thus, the textual representations of the past in Kamchatka need to be seen within this framework; a focus on the familial rather than the wider social, and an emphasis on character identification and accessible emotional aesthetic rather than a broader depiction of the past. As stated, this idea itself will be subject to further critique, but it is worth mentioning here because analysis of Kamchatka's representation of the past is limited by itself: the effects of the past on the family in question, the changes wrought upon them and the relation of these changes to other temporal zones are some of the only ways to understand the past created by the film. With these limitations spelled out, it is possible to analyse Kamchatka and its depictions of the past in more detail, and see the merits and demerits mentioned above more clearly. This analysis will take the form of three broad themes that take into account the limitations of the film's narrative focus: the use of what might be dubbed 'time capsules' or temporal zones in the film, Harry's narration and the child's gaze, and, lastly, the film's continual linking of the past to the context in which it was made. The narrative limits of the film mentioned above are perhaps intensified by the physical location of the narrative in 'time capsules'. The majority of the film takes place in a suburban house in Buenos Aires, with another sequence even further away, temporally and spatially, at the rural estate owned by the familial grandparents. Both of these could be seen as temporal zones, and the city a third, but ones where representations of the past become problematic. For although these time capsules do not necessarily break with Hayward's definition of narrative cinema in which 'time is implicitly chronological and so must be seen to run contiguously with space', they undoubtedly represent something outside of this typical narrative temporal scheme. Through a variety of devices, Piñeyro's film makes clear that the family's escape from the city and its persecution to these places is an escape to some sort of idyllic familial past, but one that will inevitably come to an end. This narrative move, which amounts to a temporal stall on the encroaching realities of the present, is summed up well by Martin-Jones: 'the house in the suburbs in which the family hides is a temporary refuge in which to experience the mercilessly slow passing of time, because there is nowhere else to escape to'. This idea of a temporary refuge in the past is converted into an idyllic one by the dreamy lighting effects outside the house, the absence of connective technologies present and the emotional camaraderie (dancing, games, dinners) shared by the family in their time there. The suburban house thus becomes a lost paradise in the course of the narrative, what Martin-Jones rightly labels a 'virtual layer of the past', but one that ultimately has no place within the context of the dictatorship. This is perhaps problematic for Kamchatka's attempted representation of the past; the isolation of the house and the family prohibiting any wider discourse about the contextual problems in Argentina, but also, as Martin-Jones has indicated, leaving no viable means to escape these problems. The inevitability of a symbolic 'breaking' of this time capsule is portended several times, by the recurring appearance of Harry's 'cuanto tiempo' note, referring not only to his desire to improve his respiratory capacity but also the fact that time is clearing running out for the family, and by the continual phrasing of temporal duration in the short-term by the family; they will stay in the suburbs 'por un tiempo', and young fugitive Lucas will only stay with them 'por unas días'. There is a recognition of a defined temporality in this representation of the past, but it comes across as confused, and, perhaps more importantly, at the expense of a coherent wider narrative. Kamchatka often delineates the change between these temporal zones with the motif of transportation, in which Deleuze's idea of the time-image might be interpreted. The complex idea of a time-image needs explanation as well as contextualization here. It refers to the way in which a particular shot, and the movement of characters and objects within this shot, can imply temporal as well as spatial movement; or, as Marati phrases it: 'the depth of field is not a simple technical asset: it has an aesthetic and ontological function'. Something or someone may thus be moving back or forward in time according to their location relative to the camera and what it encompasses; in such cases, as Deleuze puts it, 'time is no longer subordinated to movement', as it is in conventional narrative sequence, 'but movement to time'. This analysis fits neatly with the idea of time capsules explained above, but particularly with regard to two key shots, near the beginning and at the very end of the film. Both involve the family car, but crucially, the first includes the children and the mother in their first journey away from the persecution of the city and towards the suburban familial idyll, whereas the second is the final cut of the parents driving away from their children, away from this impossible past, and towards their inevitable fate. Though the camera changes focus in both scenes, ultimately it purposefully mirrors the child's perspective; in the first case looking back at the city as the familial car moves towards the past, in the second looking towards the horizon and the future, as the parents accept, to paraphrase Deleuze, the inevitable subordination of their movement to time. These critical time-images serve to reinforce the problematic temporal zones already indicated within Kamchatka's representations of the past, but also serve, particularly in the poignant final scene, as a reminder of the inevitability of the family's fate, and the narrative stalling of temporality indicated by each previous car journey between time zones. This difficult rendering of the past as divided by time-images into time capsules is perhaps made most explicit at the house of the grandparents, where Harry is literally allowed to look through a window into another familial past in his father's old bedroom. His grandmother describes this as her 'time machine' which enables her to remember 'the good old times', making clear the distinction between these layers of time and the relative journeys the family take between them. Yet once more the temporal vision put in place by Piñeyro fails to account for outside narratives and seems to trivialize the events within these spaces. The father's emotional admission to Harry that they can't stay together any longer at their grandparents, or his brief and off-camera conversation with the grandfather about the realities of the dictatorship are both undercut by a rather sickly scene of melodrama that privileges the tranquil lakeside discussion of stargazing above the representation of a past that acknowledges, for more than a moment, the serious historical reality. It is this vision of the past, constructed through time-images of car journeys and time capsules of suburbia and overtly blissful rurality, which ultimately proves problematic in its limited scope and infrequent recognition of wider discourse. That these layers of time and representations of the past are narrated from a child's perspective has attracted positive and negative critical attention. The idea of a 'child's gaze', as mentioned earlier, is a narrative device often used but, until recently, not greatly analysed in cinema. Commentators such as Deleuze and Martin-Jones agree on the general role of the 'child-seer' in films, as narrator and device: one who does little in the way of influencing the plot, but perhaps has a greater capacity for observation and insight into what surrounds them. In this case, what surrounds Harry is the limited view of the past presented in Kamchatka. Yet there is some critical debate over whether it is always effective, with the use of a Harry's gaze here criticised for the same narrative limitations and omissions mentioned above, by analysts such as Tal, who argues that in Kamchatka this device 'infantaliza la memoria y despolitiza la historia'. This runs in stark contrast to the more general assertion made by Aguilar that the use of a child narrator in such a context 'refuses to depoliticize'. Both have valid points to make about the child's gaze and its relationship to representations of the past in the film. On the one hand, Harry's observatory and emotional power as child witness to the troubled past is often undermined by the ease at which he is placated, such as his gleeful acceptance of his father's new pseudonym, or by his misreading of wider situations, such as his ill-fated trip to his friend Bertuccio in Buenos Aires. Yet, at the same time there is evidence of this capacity for insight and politicization held up by some critics: his focused recounting of recent events to his grandfather a potent example, his questioning of Lucas' background another. However, the actual figuring of the child's gaze in Kamchatka's narrow past probably lies somewhere between the contrasting views espoused by Tal and Aguilar. For within this narrow framework of temporal zones and limited exterior narrative, Harry provides some reflection of the past outside his own gaze. His discovery of Houdini and the associated images of shackling, submersion under water and references to escapism provide some of the film's only narrative devices that indicate the horrors that occurred under the dictatorship, albeit only to a more historically aware viewer. Perhaps one of the more nuanced shots in the movie occurs when Harry calls his friend in Buenos Aires; the danger this causes to his family reflected in the depth of field background shot which shows someone being executed in the television program Los Invasores, a device that hints accurately at the past within the sphere of the child's gaze. This relatively clever figuring of violence into Harry's narrative viewpoint, even if he is incognizant of it, is arguably representative of both the flaws and benefits of his gaze being so integrally incorporated into Kamchatka's fettered account of the dictatorship and the past. For as a narrative device he does reveal, though at times cryptically, elements of tension and menace posed by this past. However, because of his lack of agency and inevitable acquiescence in his temporally and spatially restrictive surroundings, his child's gaze struggles to politicize or make explicit the past to the extent stated by Aguilar, whilst not being completely devoid of value in the way Tal argues. He is frequently rendered on the periphery of shots, usually of conversation between adults, thereby failing to reveal the full picture both literally and figuratively, unintentionally mirroring the film's own restricted view of the past. Phrased adeptly in the context of the film by Foster, 'Harry is left in an even greater confusion as to why his parents are so fearful and what this will ultimately mean in terms of the survival of the family'. In other words, the representation of the past through this narrative device is once again left slightly unclear and marginalised; although at times it does have a political and emotional effect. The constricted view of the past put forward is in some ways related to the deliberate adjoining of the film's narrative past with the context of the film's production, and the Argentine economic crisis of 2001. Perhaps credibly, Kamchatka's representation of dictatorship, however narrow, draws parallels and causal links with the context in which it was made in 2002; the film's depicted past is thus one that affects the present. This link between past and present is reiterated by Martin-Jones, who argues that 'Kamchatka reflects upon the extent to which the economic crisis that Argentina faced at the time of its release was located under military rule in the 1970s'. Elina Tranchini agrees with such a causal linkage, but goes further still, arguing that with the neoliberal crisis of 2001 and its associated woes, filmic representations of the dictatorship were one of the 'oppositionary public spheres' challenging the errors of contemporary governments by depicting and reimagining this past, with all its associated problems. The link between past and present issues can be seen at several junctures. As mentioned, the city perhaps forms its own time capsule in the film; a place of danger, of panic and change for the worse: as it was in the economic collapse of 2001. More directly, the father watches a news broadcast about the new dictatorship where its economic figurehead, Martinez de Hoz, announces the changes that will take place, to which the father says in disgust 'que van a producir tus fuerzas productivas'. Such representations of past economic (rather than military) issues encourage the viewer, particularly in the absence of wider depictions of the dictatorship, to think about the film in relation to the present as well as the past, and the direct relationship between the two. Despite its other flaws in representing the past, this element of the film, as pointed out by Tranchini and Martin-Jones, perhaps deserves some credit. Yet overall, as with other aspects of Kamchatka's representation of the past, the linking of past to present is confined to a limited number of shots. Many of these limited historic representations are linked together in the film's melodramatic narrative: the city time zone as a place of threat in both past and present, the relation of this to the movement between other temporal spaces and how this is seen through the eyes of a child narrator. These narrative devices and the representations of the past they entail are woven together effectively under the schematic of an emotional, melodramatic, middle-class aesthetic but ultimately lack something; as mentioned in the introduction, perhaps by definition. These time-zones and time-images prevent the viewer from engaging with wider discourses of the dictatorship, and the child's gaze at times observes critically but at others does so without providing real insight into the past. And although there is a credible linking of past and present issues in Piñeyro's work, it is, as with much of the film's narration of the past and its relation to wider temporal and spatial ideas, limited to short segments. A Clarin review rightly states that 'Kamchatka prefiere alejarse un escalon' in its representations of the past. Despite a poignant ending and some other redeeming features, it is hard to disagree with this appraisal of its limited portrayal of the past, particularly with regards to the temporal time zones identified, its use of the child's gaze and the problems encountered within these restrictive narrative features.