Zama (2017)

Daniel Giménez Cacho is the eponymous corregidor who has long since served his King in a Spanish colony in South America, hoping that he will soon earn a promotion and be able to leave this fairly squalid existence. He has a wife and child and to get back to them he is prepared to do pretty much anything, but gradually the man realises that he is but a pawn in a game being played by his superiors - who don't really want to be there either - that plays well to the narcissism and absolutism of a provincial administration that endowed the governor with kinglike powers to be used in petty and vengeful ways. Though "Zama" is more decent than many, there is is still a stark superiority complex amongst the conquerors whose treatment of the non-Christian and highly superstitious native population borders on the barbaric. There's a good Scots expression about being "king of your own midden" and Cacho et al deliver that sense well, especially when clad in their ill-fitting wigs and heavy European garments that further emphasise that they just don't belong here. Will he get his promotion? In many ways the production reminded me of Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" (!982) as it really does encapsulate onto film the hostility of the terrain and the environment in which "Zama" lives. It also depicts the natives as little better than savages whilst the narrative itself reveals that they are nowhere near as subjected as their European masters might like to think. Morally and physically it's an uncomfortable film to watch, but that's not a bad thing. It makes us think a little about the building blocks of empire and though it does plod along at times, is quite an interesting depiction of a man who is just as trapped as any he supervises.