A Sidney Pollack débolle unha das máis grandes alegrías cinematográficas da miña vida: As aventuras de Jeremiah Johnson, da que —entre Memorias de África, Tootsie, Michael Clayton e demais— hai pouca recordación popular (en liñas xerais, o que se recorda popularmente sempre é, do meu punto de vista, o peor, velaí a vivaz raigame do meu elitismo cultural, e pense cada quén o que queira).O filme, de 1972, baseado na novela Mountain Man (1965) dun autor pouco coñecido por estes pagos, Vardis Fisher, interpretado por un inmenso Robert Redford, cunha música envolvente e cálida e rodado nas impresionantes paraxes naturais de Alaska, desenvolve unha inesquecible historia —en clave iniciatica para algúns— no que un ser humano, farto das vaidades da vida urbana, non só se reencontra a si propio senón que, aínda máis, se reinterpreta a partir de valores que, ata o momento do seu contacto coa natureza en estado puro, ignoraba: a comuñón permanente coa lei natural, o escaso sentido do concepto raza, a solidaridade, o honor… Entre outras moitas secuencias inmortais, a escena na que o pawnee, no medio da neve, sabendo que vai morrer, réndese, e, axeonllado, entoa, como despedida da existencia, un cántico espiritual na súa eufónica lingua é, para min, do mellor da historia do cine.
Unha película eterna, de culto, intelixente, e dunha extraordinaria clarividencia en moitos temas de actualidade (a ecoloxía e o crecemento sostible, a tolerancia e comprensión entre razas…). Velaí a miña modesta homenaxe a Sidney Pollack. Levouno a Parca sendo ben novo. Vaia en paz.
8 comentarios:
Prezado Juan Luis:
Cando vostede falaba de botarse ao monte, debo entender que é sería unha aventura ao estilo Jeremiah Johnson a que desexaría para reencontrarse coa esencia do mundo?
Se é así, entendo a súa vontade.
Saúdos!
Por descontado, lamento o pasamento de Sidney Pollack!
Salvando as distancias, é como esa terrible sensación cando alguén querido morre. Aqueles que non cremos na gloria divina, quedamos sen consolo e coa idea de que nunca máis volveremos tocar a esa persoa, conversar, rir ou chorar con ela.
No caso do xenios coma este, a sensación de saber que non volveremos experimentar o pracer de sentarnos por vez primeira diante dunha creación súa, é lamentable.
Quédannos, no primeiro caso, os recordos, e neste último, a posibilidade de revisar a súa filmografía, na que volvermos descubir novas sensacións.
O malo de tirarse ao monte por estas latitudes é que, no canto de pawnees e crows, había atopar paisanos de pucha (que algo de indio teñen, por suposto) e, no canto de renxíferos e osos grizzly, palleiros e vacas, pero, en fin, chegado o momento, procurarei non declarar a guerra aos habitantes de Folgoso de Courel, O Incio ou A veiga, por poñer algún caso.
A recomendación final é ver Jeremiah Johnson, nunha sorte de visionado votivo ou ritual en memoria do mestre.
Sr. Blanco Valdés:
Permítame que lle deixe un documento, tamén sobre indios, que se non o viu xa -a velocidade á que circulan as cousas pola rede é de vertixe- creo que lle vai interesar.
Saúdos
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=L7i4HnD5Coc
As aventuras de Jeremiah Johnson, en sesión doble, sen sabermos siquera quen era o tal Pollack, e case sen enterármonos de que o Robert Redford ese era o tipo máis guapo do universo mundo, foron tamén para min un descubremento total. Unha das miñas películas favoritas. O que nunca sei é por qué Pollack, que fixo varias obras mestras, sen sabermos que era el quen as rodaba, nunca gozou do prestixio doutros colegas.
Vou dicir unha barbaridade, pero dame igual: prefiro media hora dunha peli deste tipo que toda a filmografía de Bergman, de Truffaut ou de Rohmer. Pero debe ser demasiado convencional (ostias!), ou demasiado comercial (ostias, again!), ou demasiado americano (que tamén os hai!) para os padais máis selectos do cinéfilo mundo. Peor para eles. Eles o perden.
[Eu tamén me tiraba ao monte se JJ/RR estivera por alí, coa heterosexualidade ao carallo].
Podíase dicir con outras palabras, pero non mellor. Descanse en paz o señor Pollack, que tan boas horas nos fixo pasar a todos.
Un saúdo.
NYTimes
Sydney Pollack, Filmmaker New and Old
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: May 28, 2008
Sydney Pollack’s career as a director blossomed in the 1960s and ’70s, but in many ways he was a throwback to an earlier era in American movies.
The story of the New Hollywood, dominated by a wild bunch of ambitious, iconoclastic would-be auteurs, is by now overgrown with nostalgia and legend-mongering, but Mr. Pollack’s place in that legend suggests continuity rather than upheaval. The vitality of motion pictures has always been sustained by craftsmen with a modicum of business sense and the ability to tell a good story. Mr. Pollack, who died on Monday at 73, was never (and never claimed to be) a great innovator or a notable visual stylist. If he could be compared to a major figure from the Old Hollywood, it would not be to one of the great individualists like Howard Hawks or John Ford, who stamped their creative personalities onto every project, whatever the genre or the level of achievement. Mr. Pollack was more like William Wyler: highly competent, drawn to projects with a certain quality and prestige and able above all to harness the charisma of movie stars to great emotional and dramatic effect.
Just about any film by Robert Altman or Martin Scorsese, for instance, will be immediately and primarily identifiable as such, no matter who’s in it. But if you think of “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” you’ll remember Jane Fonda, so desperate and defiant and sad as she pushes herself through a Depression-era dance marathon. “Tootsie” is Dustin Hoffman’s movie. “This Property Is Condemned” will conjure up Natalie Wood and Robert Redford, oddly cast but nonetheless generating Southern Gothic heat in an overripe Tennessee Williams scenario. And it is Mr. Redford who defines Mr. Pollack’s oeuvre nearly as much as the director himself. Over nearly 25 years, from “This Property Is Condemned” to “Havana,” they worked together on westerns (“Jeremiah Johnson,”); love stories both sweeping (“The Way We Were”) and intimate (“The Electric Horseman”); paranoid thrillers (“Three Days of the Condor”); and high-toned literary adaptations (“Out of Africa.”)
Those movies demonstrate both Mr. Redford’s consistency — he’s handsome, stoic, adjusting the mix of sensitivity and mischief depending on the role — and Mr. Pollack’s range. He was an exemplary mainstream filmmaker, which is not to say that he was a timid or unimaginative director. As a producer, he was certainly prolific and eclectic, putting his name on (and his energy and enthusiasm behind) projects as varied in scale and style as “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Forty Shades of Blue.” In both capacities he worked, comfortably and with conviction, within the parameters of the Hollywood “A picture” tradition, turning out high-quality commercial entertainments that did not shy away from ethical and political engagement.
His death is a reminder that things have changed, that the kind of movie he made, which used to be the kind of movie everyone wanted to make (and to see), may be slipping into obsolescence. His last completed feature, “The Interpreter,” with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn hashing out the traumas of postcolonial African politics at the United Nations, struggled to find the mix of topicality and high intrigue that had come so easily in the ’70s, but it mostly seemed forced and preposterous. The blend of big stars with meaty, serious themes; lavish production values; and unstinting professionalism that once would have seemed foolproof looked downright anachronistic.
The old A pictures, made for mass appeal and Oscar glory, no longer have the industry cachet or cultural impact they used to. The studios send their specialty divisions out in search of awards on the relative cheap, while action franchises, raunchy comedies and family-friendly animation bring in the big money and attract the heavy investments.
There are exceptions, from time to time, movies that try to steer between the art house and the lowest common denominator in the great Hollywood middle-brow tradition. Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton,” a tale of corporate malfeasance with a smart script, a few murders and George Clooney’s charisma, may be the best recent example. It’s hardly an accident that Mr. Pollack’s name appears in the credits twice, as a producer and as a member of the cast.
It would be nice if “Michael Clayton” turned out not to be an anomaly but rather a sign that the old mainstream has not entirely run dry. And I hope that there are at least aspiring filmmakers and producers out there who dream of being the next Sydney Pollack
Vale, Scotty tamén o di moi ben.
Publicar un comentario