A teenager elopes and her father chases her across Patagonia in this surreal quasi-Western.
Jauja
4070 UW Vilas Hall
Saturday, March 7, 7 pm
Visionary Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso has created a mesmerizing, surrealist film starring Viggo Mortensen (Witness, Lord of the Rings). Mortensen, who speaks both Danish and Spanish in the film, plays a Danish surveyor involved in a campaign to wipe out "coconut heads" (indigenous peoples) and make way for white settlers in 1880s Patagonia. After his lovely daughter elopes with a young soldier, he rides and, after his horse is stolen, stumbles through the impossibly gorgeous desert and mountain landscape as reality begins to fracture. An antidote to Hollywood's clichés, the dreamlike film plays with perceptions and includes sparse dialogue, gorgeous cinematography and a minimalist score, co-composed by Mortensen. The 2014 film won the film critics award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and kicks off Cinematheque's festival of New Argentine Cinema.
