Ambiguous Disenchantment in El corazón del bosque

DEPETRIS CHAUVIN, IRENE

Burning Darkness. A Half Century of Spanish Cinema. Ed. Joan Ramon Resina.

State University of New York Press

Lugar: Albany, NY; Año: 2008; p. 97 - 104

The Santanderian filmmaker Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón (1942) produced one of the most unique bodies of work in contemporary Spanish cinema. Over a period of thirty years he directed thirteen films, created a television adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes? Don Quijote (2002), and made important contributions as a scriptwriter. Although most recognized by the public for recent films, such as Cosas que dejé en la Habana (1998), it was with his films shot in the late 1970?s and early 1980?s that he conceived his original aesthetic. Critics have both celebrated and disapproved of Habla mudita (1973), Camada negra (1977), Sonámbulos (1978), El corazón del bosque (1979), Maravillas (1981) and Feroz (1983) for their lyric, enigmatic, or even unintelligible narratives. As other directors during the Transition, Gutiérrez Aragón dealt with Spanish reality by creating metaphorical stories and achieved this through an approach that stresses the interweaving of testimony with fable. Leaving aside his specific esthetic resolution, it is almost impossible to consider Gutiérrez Aragón?s work outside the framework of the political realities of the Transition. A member of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) from 1962 until 1975, with Camada negra (1977), Sonámbulos (1978) and El corazón del bosque (1979), Gutiérrez Aragón produced a remarkably heterodox political trilogy. Of the three films, the last one has most consistently been identified as reaching a sort of aesthetic and political balance. Through a narrative that is extremely poetic and difficult to digest, Gutiérrez Aragón directly addresses the intricate problem of the guerrilla?s resistance to Franco and, in doing so he provides perhaps the most vivid testimony of the ideology of disenchantment.In a suggestive reading of El corazón del bosque, John Hopewell rightly notes that the film concerns itself less with a debate about Spain?s historical past than with the creation of personal, popular, and political myths. His analysis shows how the incidents of the tale, the status of the individual characters and their symbolic relations, the framing and lighting style of Gutiérrez Aragón?s film invoke a mythical universe persistently threatened by history.Undoubtedly, Hopewell?s clearing path through El corazón del bosque?s intersection of myth and history serves as a reminder of the complex polysemy of Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón?s narrative. In a sense, both the logics of myth and history are represented in the film; however, instead of conceiving them clearly as opposites, the world of El corazón del bosque evokes a fascinating ambiguity. In this essay, I would like to reconsider that ambiguity, illustrating how the logics of myth and of history are subverted by Gutiérrez Aragón. As an example, I will take into account both the cinematic techniques used to portray the main characters of the film and the role of the folkloric tale that, mediating between the logics of myth and history, allows Gutiérrez Aragón to display original conceptions about knowledge and political commitment.