MAN FACING SOUTHEAST (HOMBRE MIRANDO AL SUDESTE)
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A serious science fiction film from Argentina has a psychiatrist faced with a Christ-like patient who claims to be an alien. This is a film with a lot to say about psychiatry, hunger, charity, and religion. With that much to say it is, perhaps, over-ambitious. It does not do everything right but what is right is worth seeing.
Argentina is not one of the countries one generally expects to be making science fiction films. It has had a film industry for quite a long time--as anyone who has heard EVITA knows--but their films seem rarely seem to get international play and do not seem to have much fantasy, in any case. Yet Argentina has a heritage of literary fantasy led until his recent death by Jorge Luis Borges. Borges's influence can be felt in a new fantasy science fiction film from Argentina, MAN FACING SOUTHEAST. The film combines elements of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.
The main character of MAN FACING SOUTHEAST is a psychiatrist in an insane asylum. Dr. Denis is disturbed by his inability to really help his patients and by the asylum's callous and factory-like treatment of patients. One patient's fantasy, incidentally, is an uncredited enactment of the painting "The Lovers" by Magritte. But a new patient appears at the asylum one day, committing himself. It is Rantes's apparent delusion that he is an extra-terrestrial sent to Earth on a mission. He commits himself voluntarily because he knows society would only commit him more forcibly if he did not.
Rantes sees the suffering and pain around him and the selfishness of the comfortable. In a number of scenes he turns the tables. But Dr. Denis is the real center of the story. Facing pressure to drug Rantes out of what may or may not be an illusion (actually the audience knows which but the doctor does not), Denis sees himself as Pontius Pilate, being forced to crucify another Jesus. As more patients at the asylum become disciples of Rantes, the pressures increase on the bewildered psychiatrist to fulfill his role as the later-day Pilate.
MAN FACING SOUTHEAST is an intelligent science fiction film that needs no special effects. It is at once a cry of social despair, a philosophical essay, and a science fiction story. If anything it tries to be too much and spreads itself too thin; often it gives way to cliche. Yet in many ways it is comparable to THE MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT and if the Argentine industry follows the same path the British did, we can hope to see a lot more good films from it in the future. Rate MAN FACING SOUTHEAST a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews