La Horas Del Dia

Director: Jaime Rosales
Starring: Alex Bredemuhl, Vincente Romero, Maria Antonia Martinez, Agata Toca

Not again – that was my first reaction to the recent report on campus shooting that occurred in University of Illinois on, ironically, Valentine ’s Day. The antagonist, one Steven Kazmierczak, 27, shot 27 students within 90 seconds, killing 5 of them, before turning the gun on himself. The love of murder seems to cling in the air, the fearful memories of the Virginia Tech incident having barely left us. The most worrying part, however, is how in both cases, and several others, the shooters are almost identified as quiet and reserved individuals who seem too mild to do bad.

In this light, ‘Le Horas Del Dia’, the second film screened on the 3^rd Spanish Film Fest at The Arts House, come to mind as really relevant in portraying the grinding psyche of the seemingly unperturbed – the restless sleep of the spinning top.

This story follows Abel – an ordinary man, with an ordinary job and life – through several ordinary daily problems and ordinary conversation: an entirely non-descript life with all it mundane repetitions. However, underneath his amicable and calm veneer, hidden in Abel is a murderer waiting for his next victim.

An unlikely thriller, “Las Horas Del Dia” is definitely not plot driven. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Shot entirely without music, the film puts Abel’s prosaic life in stark relief. Scenes change very slowly and a single action may take up to one minute of screen time; conversations are blatantly repeated at times and the silence between responses have no fillers to disperse the tense antagonism; locations are usually almost empty except for a few stragglers who randomly emerge.

The result is intensive – like the skin of the water stretch to its limits; a stone falls and creates a ripples in the pool that swiftly disappears. Upon this stagnant backdrop, Abel’s murders become inordinately gruesome, and poignant. He characteristically kills his victims by suffocation, a parallel to his own suffocating life of silent discontent. After every murder, Abel achieves a sort of catharsis and returns to his routines as if nothing had happened; then the cycle continues in its irrevocable, terrifying revolution, an idea reinforced by the film’s symmetrical timeline.

Evidently, the alienation of the city has not left us; couple that with increased globalization, the entire world is becoming a living tick-a-tock. Terrorists are only those who are more forthright with their discontent; buried in many of us is the same malignant tumor of discontent that may result in less vast, but equally inhumane actions. “Las Horas Del Dia” does not provide a solution (perhaps there isn’t any), but it does show that if nothing is done, the vicious cycle will simply go on, and on, and on.