10: “Trance film, ghost story, and political allegory, the impossibly dense and allusive Headless inlays every image with enigma so that its simple tale of a woman seized by the belief that she has committed a crime takes on an air of epistemological riddle” (James Quandt 2009: 95)
Discuss how The Headless Woman blends different cinematic genres to explore Argentine history/society, paying particular attention to the film’s use of enigmatic images.
The Headless Woman contains many cinematic genres to convey the importance of remembering the national trauma that was the military dictatorship, and the dirty war of the 70’s and 80’s. Lucretia Martel has combined the genres of a physiological thriller, melodrama and contemporary art cinema to create a historical allegory that conforms to the conventions of the New Argentine Cinema. These controversial films emerged as a result of the ‘disappearances’ carried out by the military junta, and they acted as a way to remember those who were forgotten and the families that never received the courtesy of an explanation for the strange disappearances of their loved ones. The Headless Woman is part of this group of films as it is described as a ‘hallucinatory experience of immersion within the effects of guilt, complicity and denial unleashed by the last dictatorship’ (Sosa, 2010, 250). It represents a metaphor for how the government disregarded and denied the crimes they committed, much like how Vero ignores the dog/child in the road, and continues to drive. The question presented to the audience to answer is: is Vero more concerned with the fact that she has killed a child or, the fact that she has committed a crime?
Martel has successfully made the film a ‘hallucinatory experience’ by using cinematic techniques of the psychological thriller genre to perplex the audience, and distort their vision by using mise-en-scène, sound and cinematographic techniques. For example, in the sequence of the crash, Vero’s reaction plays the thriller part of the film. The camera stays with Vero after the accident to disinhibit the audience from reflecting on the crash and seeing what she has actually hit, consequently giving them a restricted viewpoint. They can only see the blurred figure in the road through the fogged rear-view mirror, as this is the only way Vero allows herself to see too. Vero continues to ignore what she has done and puts her sunglasses on, shielding herself from the crime and hiding the reality of the injustice she has just committed. Martel has chosen this particular action to signify how the government had shielded themselves away from the crimes they committed, as it is a key symbol for refusal to see the truth. Vero’s car noticeably hits two separate bodies as we hear two thumps, suggesting that she did in fact hit the Amerindian under-class boy that is found later in the film, blocking the canal. After Vero stops the car, the ambiguous ghostly sounds of the ongoing ring of her phone (the reason for the crash) and her slow-paced breathing can be heard. Also, the radio continues to play “the cheesy and sticky version of ‘Mammy Blue’ by Julio Iglesias, the soundtrack of the military era” (Sosa, 2010, 257). Martel reflects on Argentina’s Dictatorial past by using this specific song, permitting the audience to know that the knowledge of this past exists in the world of the film, therefore giving this sequence a much eerier effect on the audience. These raw sounds allude to the psychological thriller drama as the audience wonder why Vero is not acting more panicked in this situation.
The film is now set up to be a psychological thriller/crime drama, but Martel then withdrawals all the audiences expectations and frustrates them as she leaves the thriller conventions behind, and begins conforming to the mode of melodrama, now making it a trans-genre film. After the crash, Vero visits the hospital and a hotel, where she meets her brother-in-law and proceeds to have an affair with him. The affair with her brother in law disconnects her from the crime she has committed. Although this affair is a crime in itself and morally incorrect, Vero patriciates anyway. This immediately expresses to the audience that they are about to become preoccupied with an ‘ordinary’ woman’s domestic every-day, as well as the mystery of the crash. This commercial mode of film-making targets the female audience as Martel has established a close relationship with the heroine in these sequences where the camera simply tracks her actions. The crime genre has been paused in this sequence to frustrate the audience’s desire for knowledge, much how Vero still has yet to know the consequences of her crimes. ‘In the Headless Woman, Vero, having lost her (narrative) drive in the accident, has no choice but to submit to the patriarchal law and family order that is waiting in the wings’ (Rothermel, 2014, 242). Vero continues to act submissive and in a passive state for the rest of the film, until the narrative develops and she confesses her secret to her husband. The next narrative twist in the film reveals to the audience that the middle-class family order has covered-up all evidence leading to her crime, much like how the military covered-up their wrong doings. This reflects the patriarchal, male orientated society that they are living in. Vero may have admitted to the crime but now her family has destroyed all the evidence so she has to comply with their intentions and live with the knowledge that she has committed a brutal crime. After this, Vero rejoins the class and accepts the ignorance of her crime as she returns to her middle-class life of ease and privilege, while the indigenous family continue to suffer and go without explanation for the death of their younger brother.
‘Melodrama offers an imaginary focused on the private sphere of the family’ (Kaplan, 2001, 202). This can be linked to Vero’s 13-year-old, ill niece, Candita, who admits her love for Vero. She confesses in a love letter which is never revealed by Vero so she then confesses in person. (The Headless Woman, 01:04:30) This narrative twist is the only part of the film where a family member ‘breaks the silence’ on something that is thought to be wrong as she attempts to make it acceptable. For example, it can be seen as a metaphor for how society did not protest against the disappearances as they were too scared, so it continued to happen. This ‘private sphere of the family’ is revealed making the film even more focused on the genre of melodrama. Candita is the only exception in the film by rebelling against the traditions and therefore breaking the patriarchal, middle-class family reputation.
The film also introduces the contemporary art cinema genre by using slow paced scenes, limited dialogue and a visual composition that restricts the audience’s viewpoint, hence increasing the disorientating feeling that Martel endeavoured for. The ambiguity of this style anchors the audience to the heroine with the use of extreme close ups, strange truncations and a distorted focal perspective. The audience seem to always be watching over Vero’s shoulder, as if to be her conscience when she is almost oblivious to the world around her. In The Headless Woman the camera is frequently placed behind something to obstruct the audiences view of the subject that creates ‘a counter understanding of reality as something malleable that is best represented from multiple perspective’ (Rodriguez, 2014, 104). Most repeatedly, we see shots where Vero’s head is off-screen, where she is literally shown without a head. These strange truncations act as a metaphor for her ‘losing her mind’, perhaps over the terror that she has committed a crime. It never seems as though she is sorry for killing a child, especially because she has children of her own, but it seems more like she is concerned with thinking of herself as a criminal.
Martel has used these enigmatic images to distort the audience’s viewpoint, but also to highlight the importance of remembering those who had unfortunately been ‘disappeared’. This is a national duty in Argentina, but those in different places of the world may not be aware of the tragic past that Argentina has faced. ‘Martel’s film deals with the violence to those who have become almost invisible, those whom Judith Butler calls the faceless and whose lives seem to have fallen outside the ‘human’’ (Sosa, 2010, 257). In the scene of the car crash, the hand prints from the young children in the previous scene can clearly be seen on the window in the mid-shot of Vero. This visual image is unsettling to the audience as they are presented by the mental image of Vero killing a child, juxtaposing with Vero’s young nephew’s handprints on the window beside her. The prints can also be seen as metaphorical for the lost children during the dictatorship, almost as if they are grasping onto survival and wishing to be remembered. They are the faceless and forgotten children of the war, but the handprints are the last remaining pieces of evidence of what they once were.
The film also conforms to the conventions of a political allegory by using the binary opposites between the middle and the lower class. Throughout the film, the motif of water is used to signify the differences between the classes. The women are disgusted in the first scene by the drowned turtles in the pool, as if to say the lower-class filth has infiltrated the privileges of the wealthy. Also, the dead boy is found blocking the canal after a storm, causing a flood. Instead of being sympathetic, the middle-class family simply roll up their windows complaining of a “horrible smell” (The Headless Woman, 55:18). This is reflective of how the family does not care about the death of a young, native boy any more than they care about the death of contaminated turtles. This is evident in the shots where the middle-class family members are surrounded by the underclass servants who are identifiably descendants of the colonial period. They are treated as though they are invisible to the family, although they act as the passive witnesses to the events that unfold. In many shots, they are darkened in the background with very low-lighting or almost entirely blurred out of focus. Critics say this cinematography and mise-en-scéne is representative of ‘Argentina’s refusal to acknowledge a widening economic disparity between the middle and lower class’ (Holden, 2009). Martel has purposefully used this extreme shallow focus to convey the unimportance of the colonial decedents to the white, privileged middle-class, and to reflect the neglect they receive everyday by being treated with disrespect. The lack of Vero’s appreciation for the ethnicity around her explores the political social history of Argentina.
Referring to the quote above, the film is discussed as a ‘ghost story’ (Quandt, 2009, 95). This is most clear in the film when Vero sits with her aunt Lala as she refers to the cook’s son, and the rest of the servants as ghosts. “The house is full of them…The Dead… Don’t look at them. Ignore them and they’ll leave” (The Headless Woman, 56:30) Aunt Lala murmurs the phrases, suggesting the knowledge of the historical events but the ignorance to accept them and just “ignore them”. Much like how the middle-class Argentine society decided to just look away from the crimes being committed by the military dictatorship, and have allowed the 30,000 bodies to just become forgotten ghosts. Martel has used an enigmatic image in this scene to stun the audience and change their perception of the reality of the film when then ‘the silhouette of a boy, out of focus and unexplained, quietly slips out of the room’ (Romney, 2010). This image of the cook’s son can be seen as reflective of the many ghosts that have become forgotten after the war, or perhaps the phantom of the indigenous child killed by Vero. Perhaps the image is just in Vero’s head, and the audience are only seeing it because they have gradually become so anchored to her, that they see her hallucinations also. The film can be read as a ghost story more generally in that Vero is the one becoming the ghost. She has seemed to have lost a part of herself (hence her headless-ness) and is progressively losing her grasp of reality. This is conveyed perfectly in the cinematography where her head seems to be blocked by something obstructing the camera, in order to ‘convey Veronica’s fractured mental state’ (Kukla, 2017).
The Headless Woman is a decisively structured and composed film by Lucretia Martel to represent the historical trauma that the nation of Argentina had experienced throughout, and after the military dictatorship. The film is an ongoing metaphor, and political allegory to highlight the many issues that Argentina still faces such as the class divide, the economic barriers and the criminal injustice. Martel’s film successfully asks the audience if Vero’s actions should go unnoticed, like the governments, and therefore ‘addressing the spectators with an uncomfortable question: Do you want to be complicit too?’ (Sosa, 2010, 256).
Bibliography:
Ø E. Ann Kaplan; Melodrama, cinema and trauma, Screen, Volume 42, Issue 2, 1 July 2001, Pages 201–205
Ø The Headless Woman. (2008). [film] Directed by L. Martel. Argentina: Aquafilms.
Ø Holden, S. (2009). An Argentine Film by Lucrecia Martel Shows the Convenience of Forgetting. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/movies/19headless.html [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Ø Kukla, B. (2017). Framing the Breakdown: Visual Psychosis in Lucrecia Martel's 'The Headless Woman' - Vague Visages • Wave Faces. [online] Vague Visages • Wave Faces. Available at: https://vaguevisages.com/2017/12/04/framing-breakdown-visual-psychosis-lucrecia-martels-headless-woman/ [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Ø Rodriguez, P. (2014). Little Red Riding Hood Meets Freud in Lucrecia Martel's Salta Trilogy. Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, 29(3 87), pp.93-115.
Ø Romney, J. (2010). The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel, 87 mins, (12A). [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/the-headless-woman-lucrecia-martel-87-mins-12a-1905589.html [Accessed 19 May 2018].
Ø Rothermel, D. and Panse, S. (2014). A critique of judgment in film and television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.234-254.
Ø Sosa, C. (2010). A Counter-narrative of Argentine Mourning. Theory, Culture & Society, 26(7-8), pp.250-262.