El cielo gira (2004)

I don't have much to say about this movie, but what I have to say is simple: this is the most BORING movie I have ever seen! Boring, boring, boring! This spanish movie came to me because it came free with a newspaper. This fact alone could make one doubt of its qualities, but the cover expressed that it had won major prizes in Rotterdam, Paris and Buenos Aires film festivals. The theme, a documentary about a little Spanish village with just 14 inhabitants, all senior citizens, also appealed to me as an urban planner. So, I started to see this movie last weekend. I saw 40 minutes and could stand it no more. Basically, it is just static shots of old people seating on the village square or on the fields with the most boring conversation ever, entwined with shots of construction work, because an old monastery is being turned into a high class hotel, and overlapped by a woman's voice off narration, nice to cure insomnias. It was so boring that I saw the last remaining hour during the course of 6 days, 10 minutes a day. I could not see the end of it. So, why so many awards and quotations on the cover by journalists saying it is marvellous? Well, I have found that many people, out of trying to pass themselves as very cultural or very artistic-oriented, mistake what is clearly a different approach from the mainstream, and a cultural relevant theme, with what is a great artistic film work. I have seen unbelievably slow movies which were beautiful and incredible and amazing. Leone, Godard, Fellini could film an old man sleeping for 5 minutes and they could make it beautiful. But not Mercedes Alvarez, the director. She films an old man sleeping for 5 minutes and it is just plain boredom! She just points the camera. There is not an inch of feeling. Besides, what is worse, she tries to make the conversations natural, but by the simple variation of camera shots in a scene, we can see that they were rehearsed! The theme is relevant, yes, interior small villages face the problem of old age, loneliness and extinction. But this movie, aiming to call attention to that, makes me feel exactly the opposite. It makes the village look so incredibly dull, that I would never set foot in there, and am glad it is deserted. It tries to show the degradation that these spaces have had in this day and age, but cinematographically fails in every aspect. It makes me feel ill that all these critics and juris from festivals give awards of cinema to the theme of the movie and not to the movie itself. The theme, as I said, is important, and as a urban planner I fight against it. But as a moviegoer I have to say: DO NOT WATCH IT! Please, save yourself the 100 minutes of suffering.