A film of the simplest and most complex of working worlds. A wonderful visual poem
“Araya” was originally produced in 1959 when writer/director Margot Benacerraf (co-written by Pierre Seghers) was nominated for the Golden Palm award at Cannes. She is credited with only one additional film, “Reverón” in 1952. The film is a complex combination of documentary and narrative in the spirit of the French New Wave. It tells the story of one day in the life of a seaside community in the extreme north of Venezuela. The occupants of the town make their living almost exclusively from the production of salt. The salt is mined from the vast Caribbean Sea marshes that extend out from the town. The shallow marshes allow the salt to condense and solidify on the sea bed under the shallows where the mineral is cut into sections by hand and brought to shore for drying, processing and eventual bulk sale to the world.
The beauty of the film lies in its presentation of an extremely simple life style that unfolds like a flower into something wonderfully complex. Rather than being a training film on how to mine salt deposits from the sea the story starts from the middle and moves out both ways chronologically as well as socio-economically. The first thing we see is a family of three generations where each person hauls salt in their own way and with their own distinct purpose. From here the story moves at the same time forward to the weighing and paying for the product and backward to the cutting and floating of the salt to shore. So what at first appears simple gradually unfolds into a very complicated and finely tuned human structure—a small scale world economy.
Towards the end of the main development the film blossoms in other directions as the allied industries of fishing, pottery and water distribution are worked into the main industry of salt production. The entire picture of the community of Araya emerges like a painting. It starts first with sketches and then is finished layer by layer. The people who are at first cartoons, stick figures demonstrating salt production, develop into humans with likes and dislikes as their deeply rooted expressions are defined through their activities.
The narrative of the film is also unique in that it is a poem. The poetry is subtle but the narrative is done in a rhythm that echoes the rhythm of the sea upon which the salt and fishing industries of Araya are based. Against the backdrop of the rhythmic narrative and the amplified sounds of the water are the rhythms of the pounding of the salt and the countless steps that form the tattoo of the villagers.
These patterns are accompanied by the original music of Guy Bernard. Soundtrack music threatens to overcome many modern films; it seems to have a life of its own. The music in this film comes and goes like the wind and tides that form the backdrop of the town. The cinematography of Giuseppe Nisoli emphasizes the flatness of the peninsula and the extremely arid nature of the environment. The vistas go on forever and water is a priceless commodity that has to be trucked in from miles away and distributed in an extremely structured manner. One bucket for each family and no exceptions. One can just imagine the newly wedded couple getting their first bucket of water as a family; a very different right of passage.
As the film closes into night the last act is the disclosure that their work does not end at the end of the day. The work continues around the clock with each specialized set of tasks happening at the time most opportune. The final result is a never-ending cycle of life; a flower that blossoms and dies only to sow the seeds of the next blossoming each day.
Directed by: Margot Benacerraf
Narrated by: José Ignacio Cabrujas and Laurent Terzieff
Release: October 7, 2009
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