Balamos (1982)

Balamos, Stavros Tornes, 1982

Here is a curious film, suggested to me as a 'gentler El Topo' and one that I watched two times back to back to fully absorb. This is an expansive story, in some manner the precursor of Cloud Atlas, and definitely it has elements common to El Topo. The film also has its own charm, the extremely personal way the film is shot and how the landscapes become an entity with the movie. The latter is achieved by strange way, he shoots both day and night as naturally close as possible. There are phases of darkness with only the moon and ambient noise, and nature becomes a breathing part of our protagonist's journey towards Olympus. The film has its foundations in the very same idea Inception is based on, but its used here with different connotations, very philosophical I believe. Our man wants to buy a horse, probably in reality probably not, and in his journey to do that he indulges into dreams that take him through his own past lives. He pictures himself as a slave in the middle ages, around Christ's resurrection, making his journey towards Olympus. The horse remains a recurrent motif throughout and somewhat elusive to our character. But this film is not much about the story as it is about symbolism and that is where similarities to El Topo come in. This is a quest of a man for the final truth, much like the Mahaprasthan undertaken by the Pandavas in Mahabharata, only that it remains ever elusive. The film is shot in low light and sub-par production values but it is transcendental in its core belief and sometimes stimulating, sometimes not. At places I found it to be a bit opaque and the story is easy to miss if you're not attentive because its really buried under the symbolic narrative, but the film does have some great moments of eternal truth. And through mostly simple, sometimes unreadable imagery. Probably I did not pick up all the Biblical references but the usage of the horse as a symbol of an illusive object of desire in reality as well as dream world was a very interesting element. I guess this is a movie that is actually 'obscure', considering the two reviews in IMDb are written by people who have put no effort into watching it. These are my thoughts on first sight, but I hope to understand this work better because it's indeed very interesting.