THE STORY – In 2009, a man and two accomplices try to evict members of the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina. Claiming ownership of the land and armed with guns, they kill the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. The murder is caught on video. It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free. The film combines the voices and photographs of the community with courtroom footage to explore the long history of colonialism and land dispossession that led to this crime.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Lucrecia Martel (Director/Writer) & María Alché (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
Documentaries have the power to inspire, educate, and truly change the world. In the case of Lucrecia Martel’s new non-fiction film, “Nuestra Tierra” (or its English title, “Landmarks”), the filmmaker creates a work of art with an unquestionably noble purpose. Namely, she constructs what’s essentially a visual defense of an Indigenous community fighting for both their land and for justice, after the murder of one of their own. It’s hard to argue with Martel’s mission, or the existence of the film at all; however, unfortunately, the director’s wide-ranging approach has the effect of muddling the story rather than elevating it.
The film revolves around the native Chuschagasta community that lives in northern Argentina. In 2009, an infamous incident took place in which a trio of non-Chuschagasta men charged onto the land, violently claiming ownership by brandishing guns. The subsequent skirmish ended with the killing of the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. But despite video evidence, the case was not swiftly brought to justice, requiring nine years of public outrage and protest before the community was allowed to have its day in court.
“Nuestra Tierra” doesn’t use on-screen text or third-party narration to tell its story. In fact, it essentially tosses audiences right into the proceedings with little context or prerequisite explanation. This may give the impression that viewers are being totally submerged and integrated into the true life story, but it also means that most viewers will likely take a while to fully find their bearings. Further confusing matters is the non-linear approach that Martel takes to telling her story. In the first few minutes, we jump back and forth between the courthouse and a defendant-led recreation of what happened at the actual crime scene, but again, the context is intentionally vague, and exposition is nonexistent.
Martel takes her camera beyond the bounds of the criminal case to explore the lives of the Chuschagasta. She selects individual members of the community who, one by one, narrate the stories of their lives, particularly in relation to their identity as Indigenous people and how that’s made their experiences unique, in ways both joyful and painful (the latter especially apparent when the friction between themselves and non-Indigenous folks is discussed, which nearly every interviewee recounts in some way). The purpose is clear: Martel wishes to make a case for the community’s collective humanity by highlighting the lives of its specific members. But the patient, deliberate manner in which their stories are presented becomes monotonous – not because they’re uninteresting but because Martel does very little with their audio testimony in this visual medium. She simply allows a cavalcade of pictures from the storytellers’ past to do the work of giving the audience something to look at during these testimonies. After a significant portion of the film proceeds in this manner, rather than delving further into the court case, it begins to feel as if the film has lost a sense of drive that would help to make it more compelling.
Thankfully, the court scenes are dynamic and, at times, outrage-inducing. One incredible moment occurs when the court officials call for a “debate.” This means that one of the men on trial – Darío Amín, the one actually accused of the murder – gets the chance to sit face-to-face with one of the witnesses – a young man who was only a teenager at the time of the killing – and essentially yell and talk over him about his perspective of what happened. It’s a shocking moment and shows just how entitled and righteously sure of their innocence (even when a non-accidental death has occurred) the non-Indigenous men on trial are. In another instance, the defendants’ lawyer addresses the court by referring to a historic text that claims the Chuschagasta are extinct and therefore have no claim to the land. Martel moves away from the courthouse and actually shows the historian who wrote this in a truly shocking interview. Moments like these are essential in keeping the film’s focus and intention clear.
Whenever we’re not in the courthouse, however, the film wanders away from its central purpose. Proper nouns and shorthand terminology without explanation abound, leading to the constant feeling that one has missed something. And with context only provided as needed rather than when it would best benefit the audience, many viewers may simply get lost on the cinematic journey that Lucrecia Martel has embarked upon.
