Director: Albert Serra
Writer: Albert Serra
Stars: Roberto Dominguez, Francisco Manuel Duran, Antonio Gutierrez
Synopsis: Explores the spiritual pain of bullfighting, the tormented torero in a ring, one of the most excessive and graphic examples of the origin of Southern European civilization
Since 2019, Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra, known for his French period pieces about kings and wealthy monarchs and transgressional takes on fictional characters (Don Quijote, The Three Kings, and Casanova), has stated that he was going to make the best film about bullfighting with his documentary Afternoons of Solitude (Tardes de Soledad, playing in the Spotlight section at this year’s New York Film Festival and recent winner of the Golden Shell in the SSFF). It is a very brash comment by him, which, considering his self-aggrandizing persona, one could not think less of Serra. He has placed himself on a high standard because of his repertoire and how he perceives cinema, the creative process, and the modernization of how people take art.
Serra is held in high regard by critics, although many cinemagoers don’t seem to like him in the least due to his pretentiousness. But if there is one filmmaker who can say such pompous things and deliver his promises, it is Albert Serra. He sought to make the epitome of bullfighting movies with Afternoons of Solitude. And Serra ends up doing such a thing. The sport weirdly has not been used on the big screen that much, considering that it is a very cinematic part of Spanish culture. There are few and between, some of them only using it as a slight part of the narrative. The primordial example of bullfighting in cinema is Francesco Rosi’s criminally underseen and harrowing The Moment of Truth (Il momento della verità).
It is a dispassionate picture, a towering yet nearly morbid look at the sport. Rosi shows us specs about the mundanity behind ’60s Barcelona daily living, where the great majority find themselves surviving as a full-time job. Yet his lens gears toward that miserabilism attached to the setting, which parallels the violence emerging from the duel between toreador and bull–a clash represented by the man versus beast metaphor yet beguiled by rampaging death. The poster and premise might make you believe that the titular “moment of truth” comes from that confrontation. In reality, what Rosi perceives as such is the moment one of them, either man or bull, comes face to face with death himself.
This is a dance of death, with the balletic skills of the toreador bringing way to a haunting pageantry made to mock the beast fighting for its life. Its blood smearing in the sand as the man bows for his applause by his performance of death’s practitioner. And the people applaud; they throw flowers not to honor the dead but to celebrate the killer. A beast, so poised to stand, succumbs to the man who has pierced his heart and lungs. Rosi drowns you in many provocative and furious scenes of bullfighting down to its beginning and end, most of which are empty emotionally yet demonstrate the void that accompanies the mercilessness of a faux idol wanting to be worshipped by execution.
The Moment of Truth displays how ruthless the sport is and questions why people would approve of it via a coldness behind the camera that evokes a distanced feeling from it. You are meant to wonder what is going through the toreador’s mind upon entering the bull’s territory, taunting red to replicate the color via violence later. This is the only film I recall that has been frontal and critical about the sport. It requires deftness and inquisitiveness to pull off the contradiction between the beauty and horror of bullfighting. One of the few directors who can manage that duality is Albert Serra, who demonstrates all of the aforementioned and more in his brutal and antagonizing documentary.
Afternoons of Solitude follows Peruvian toreador Andres Roca Rey, a young star who has become the face of the next generation of bullfighters in a very short time. He was born into the sport, as his father, uncle, and brother all work (or used to) in the sport in many different ways. But the young one managed to outweigh them all, debuting in 2015 when he cut the two ears of his first bull. Andres Roca Rey is the main attraction, selling tickets instantly and impressing those who enjoy the sport, which is more than you would think. It is part of the Spanish culture–the “national spectacle” of Spain.
Fascinatingly enough, Roca Rey’s first bull was named Pocosol (or little sunlight in English), contrasting with the title of Serra’s documentary, which boasts the bright light that kisses our daily lives. But what is the solitude referring to? Is it the man standing alone in the ring as his essence fills the void of tension, worry, and nihilism? Or is it the bull, a beast slowly dying all alone as the audience cheers its demise? Serra prompts it as a two-way isolation. Both man and beast enter limbo for a few moments of realization that one of them, in most occasions, the latter, will breathe its last breath. Recollections of The Moment of Truth–What will happen when you face death itself?–pop up when watching Afternoons of Solitude in its entirety.
Will you fight an unwinnable battle or succumb to the reality of death’s inescapability? As blood smears from their bodies, the cheers become distant echoes in their minds. The participants feel the fallen’s spirit floating away. We see this through Albert Serra’s portrait of Roca Rey and his tauromachy ventures as we spend a day in his life as a bullfighter from the moment he puts on his tights to when he takes everything, now tainted in the blood of the downed beast, off in a poetic and tormenting way. Albert Serra does not add tacky commentary on Afternoons of Solitude, nor does he put his thoughts on the matter; there are no interviews either. Instead, the Catalan filmmaker lets the images speak for themselves in their plasticity and viscerality.
We watch at the cinema and see how Roca Rey works his way, day and night, one venue after the other when standing in the middle of the ring or traveling with his entourage. Serra uses repetition to demonstrate to the audience the power of this ritual between man and bull, society and culture, and heroism and violence. Through this reiteration, he creates a hypnotic effect, placing Artur Tort (Pacifiction, Liberte) and his camera in the middle so we can’t escape that existentialist horror of someone willing to die by confronting a beast that few can brutally tame. Plenty of emotions reign during the fight sequences, both from Roca Rey, the bull, and the audience watching in the stands.
Roca Rey taunts, mocks, and breezes past the beast as his facial expressions dictate joy, praise, and valor during his swift Sarabande-like moves. In contrast, the bull foams blood and snot dribbles from his note, a hard image to shake off. Everything is upside down; in the way Tort captures everything, you feel Rey and the bull’s inner damnation–the understanding of death’s role in this ritual. And the audience loves to see this, enjoying the morality of it all. Serra does this one time and another; an encounter that is met in carnage is seen from all angles, making the corrida myths be peeled back and shown for what it truly is: a blood sport.
It is war and the nature of masculinity personified; virility and the worth of man shown by Serra in the same way Hemingway described it–art in which the artist is in danger of death, brilliant coming from his honor–yet in the coldest way imaginable. However, while there is no technically blatant rhetoric against bullfighting, the close-up shots of the bull in its torn-apart state (or near it) show where Serra stands. He is admittedly blown away by the visual beauty of Roca Rey’s movements and the garments he wears. Yet he is at a loss for words for the brutality amidst it, with death being the main character, not the toreador or the bull. In between the haunting and beautiful lies the sport. And Afternoons of Solitude captures the “hidden” essence of what entails—bravery and passion, tragedy and isolation.
What I love about Albert Serra’s work is how daring and ambitious it is, whether he is exploring a past event or creating a fictional portrait. His first foray into documentary filmmaking does not distance itself from what he has done before; rather, it complements his existing filmography thematically and metaphorically. His films contain a sensory element, highlighted by their exploration of death—dread being navigated through lavish settings and rich costumes. There will undoubtedly be plenty of criticism regarding his decision to record violence against animals without intervening, simply letting the camera roll. However, Serra aims to present the sport in its rawest form, forcing the audience to confront the stark realities often hidden behind the spectacle.