Gonzalo Calzada

7.5 Nocturna (2021)

Links:

Gonzalo Calzada (Argentina, 1970) debuted with short films such as La Puerta (1994), Elmiracle de la Sangre (1996) and the 50-minute Valdemar (2000) as well as documentaries. He then directed the black comedy Luisa (2009), scripted by Rocio Azuaga, and the detective movie La Plegaria del Vidente/ The Clairvoyant's Prayer (2012), adapted from Carlos Balmaceda's novel.

Resurreccion/ Resurrection (2015), set during the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, began his collaboration with virtuoso cinematographer Claudio Beiza that continued on the mystical horror Luciferina (2018).

Nocturna A - La Noche del Hombre Grande/ The Great Old Man's Night (2021), photographed again by Claudio Beiza, is a harrowing portrait of the nightmare of old age. It is a hyper-realist drama that is pure horror, wrapped in an atmosphere of infinite agony, the agony of both aging (the old couple) and of not wanting to live (the suicide), two agonies that intersect and contradict each other. The story is an intricate labirynth of facts, memories, hallucinations, and supernatural contacts. Nocturna B - Donde los Elefantes Van a Morir/ Where the Elephants Go to Die (2021) is a one-hour appendix that is mostly a philosophical visual poem, a cryptic meditation on what happened in Part A (itself already very cryptic).

The sections of the film are marked by the time of the fateful night. It begins at 19:00 and it will end at 6:43. The film opens with the dreamy sequence of children playing hide and seek in the countryside: that's when Ulises first met Dalia. The boy Ulises closes his eyes as the girl Dalia approaches and, when he reopens them, he is an old man. Ulises unfolds a piece of paper and is confused what it means. He gets scared when he sees a man trying to enter into an apartment. Ulises doesn't know where he is and what he wanted to do. The young condominium caretaker, Daniel, sees him and helps him return to his apartment. The piece of paper is a shopping list and Daniel offers to do the shopping for him. Daniel mentions that it is not safe to walk alone because there has been a burglary. Ulises mentions that he saw a man trying to enter an apartment. Ulises thanks Daniel and asks about the pregnancy Back home, his infirmed nagging wife Dalia complains that Ulises didn't buy anything: they have nothing left to eat. Ulises mentions Daniel and Dalia reminds him that Daniel's wife is not pregnant anymore: that was five years earlier. Dalia laments that they are the last old people in the building and the other homeowners can't wait for them to leave. Ulises laments that their son Carlos forgot them and he doesn't even remember his daughter's face because he hasn't seen her in years. In the background we hear a documentary on how elephants die.

At 20:32 we see their simple routine. Dalia doesn't want Ulises talk about their daughter: the girl ruined their life and Dalia never forgave her. Ulises' chest hurts: something is wrong with his heart.

At 1:25, in the middle of the night, thunder and lightning wake up Ulises. He hear noises. He sees lights in the kitchen. They had left the TV set and the stove on. But outside their apartment there is indeed a woman screaming. She starts banging on their door. It's their upstairs neighbor, Elena, screaming and crying for help, but Ulises doesn't remembers her. Dalia doesn't want him to open, suspecting it's a trap. Elena starts insulting and threatening them. She goes away but a little later Daniel knocks at the door asking permission to enter with firemen because there has been an accident: Elena jumped off her window into Ulises' patio and lies dead on the patio floor. Daniel reminds Ulises that Elena is the neighbor, a photographer who took a picture of him. Daniel explains that Elena didn't kill herself, that it was an accident. Daniel sees that Ulises forgot the gas stove on (a fire hazard) and hints that Ulises can't continue living like that. Dalia suspects that the other homeowners want to get rid of them. At 3am Carlos calls because Daniel alerted him at the gas leak. Carlos wants to take them to the asylum the very next day. Dalia imagines talking to Ulises when he was still a child but then suddenly they hear noises upstairs and Elena again bangs on their door. Ulises and Dalia are terrified. Elena tries to break the door and sends Ulises crashing to the floor. It's 4am and a panicking Ulises calls Daniel. While lying on the floor, Ulises finds a photograph of the estranged daughter, which in the back has her phone number. He kisses it in tears. Daniel comes and of course doesn't believe that the dead Elena was banging on his door again. Dalia never forgave that the daughter got pregnant and didn't even know who the father was: she ruined their reputation. Ulises instead wants to ask her for forgiveness before he dies. We see Ulises as a child picking up the phone to call his daughter, but Dalia admonishes him, and he (still a child) confesses he's always been afraid of her. Ulises is about to dial the number but realizes that he forgot her name. He forgets what he wanted to do. For a few moments Ulises asks for his mother and doesn't recognize Dalia. Dalia tries to take the photograph from him, they fight, she falls on the floor. Ulises calls for help but this time nobody picks up the phone. Dalia imagines herlsef a child talking to Ulises as a child. Ulises walks outside in his pajama (morphing all the time into himself as a child) and sees again the man trying to enter an apartment and hears again the screams of Elena. Ulises enters Elena's apartment and stares at the pictures that she took of him, and Elena appears behind him, claiming it was just a bad night. Elena tells the tragic story of her childhood: an alcoholic father abandoned her, then her mother killed herself, and Elena spent her life looking for her father in her photographs of old men. Ulises shows her the picture of his daughter. Elena walks to the window and jumps. Ulises sees her dead body next to his daughter's photograph. He then sees Elena getting up and crying while someone is taking pictures of her. Ulises hurries back home but has to hide because the same Elena (now dead twice) is banging at his door crying for help. When Ulises enters his apartment, Elena tries to squeeze in behind him like a vicious beast. The picture of his daughter lies on the floor, torn to pieces.

At 5:02 Elena is banging again to the door and Ulises hears again Dalia's terrible words about their daughter. This time Ulises opens the door and leads the disheveled Elena to the patio where she can stare at herself dead. Ulises sits down and imagines his mother. Ulises, crying, tells her that he never felt so lonely. He finally calls his daughter Irene and apologizes but hangs up before she can say anything other than "Dad?"

At 6:43 Ulises is dressed to go out and is listening to the broadcast of how elephants die. Dalia hands him the shopping list. Ulises replies that Carlos is coming. Dalia says it's not true. Carlos is indeed knocking at the door. Ulises, afraid that Carlos wants to take them to the asylum, refuses to open. Daniel has to break down the door for Carlos to enter. Ulises is lost in memories of childhood. We hear Daniel murmur to Carlos that Ulises believed Dalia still alive, and realize that everything only happened in Ulises' mind. Ulises died with Irene's photograph in his hands and is lying on the floor. We see Ulises, standing and holding the picture, staring at the dead Ulises on the floor. Ulises' ghost then stares at Dalia, who is limping in the bedroom. Carlos is on the phone with Irene, telling her that their father died. The child Ulises walks in and passes by Carlos. We still hear old Dalia calling old Ulises. Old Dalia turns into young Dalia. The child Ulises takes her hand and leads her away. The whole film has been just the last night of a 90-year-old man, haunted by memories, guilt and loneliness.

The sequel, Nocturna B, subtitled "Where Elephants Go to Die", shot for the smaller screen of a home video, begins with shuffled rapid-fire images taken from Part A while a female voiceover gives a delirious speech that sounds like a poem by a filmmaker to the art of cinema. We then see old Ulises and hear elephant sounds, and the poem-meditation turns to old age. At 19:00 we see again the children playing hide and seek, but this time the speed of the footage is definitely meant to evoke an amateur video. We see again the man who was trying to enter an apartment but this time we hear his stream of consciousness: his wife changed the lock of the door and he feels he didn't deserve such a treatment. We see ghosts of him exiting the apartment. Eventually he just opens the door and walks in. We follow the ghosts who exited up the stairs of the building. WE see Ulises with the shopping list, confused what he wanted to do. Again, this time it's shown via a hand-held camera at an unnatural speed like an old home video. But this time he makes it to the street (Daniel doesn't stop him). Then we see Dalia getting up from the bed and hear his stream of consciousness, which is about her lifelong sense of loneliness, and we enter the secret world of her mind. We see images of the rundown apartment and we hear the sentences of Dalia and Ulises that we heard in Part A. At 1:00 we see Elena and we hear her stream of consciousness, we see her playing her broken piano, loneliness driving her mad, until she jumps from the window. We then see her banging at Ulises' door. We see her face in both slow and fast motion, her voice reduced to a beastly screech. We hear Ulises wonder how is it possible that the dead woman is back alive banging on his door. At 3:00 we hear Carlos' angry phone call. We see the footage of Ulises and Dalia as children and they see it too and they add comments. At 3:25 Elena jumps again to her death and then she's again banging on Ulises' door and then she's again in her apartment, endlessly reenacting her last moments. At 4:00 we see Dalia as a child, sitting in their bedroom, going through old photographs. We see again the man locked out by his wife, lamenting that she took everything from him. We see a ghost leaving his body and then we see the man shooting himself with a gun. Then we are back in Dalia's bedroom, with the woman shown alternatively as a child and as an old woman. She flips through her album of family photographs, smiling, but the voiceover of her stream of consciousness is a melancholy meditation on becoming useless and meaningless. We see Ulises in Elena's apartment and Elena going crazy in rapid-fire frames. We see Dalia alone at home, staring at herself in the mirror, always mutating into her younger self. At 5:30 we see an abstract collage of the various characters. At 6:00 we hear Ulises wondering what his last thought should be and we see again the images of him and Dalia children. We hear Ulises making the phone call to Irene. At 6:43 Ulises thinks about his daughter Irene, tender memories full of regrets. We hear again when Carlos arrives and Ulises and Dalia panic... and then how Daniel and Carlos find the dead body and comment on Ulises' hallucinations. The child Ulises and the old Ulises walk around the apartment. At 7:00 we see the child Ulises back in the countryside taking child Dalia's hand and walking away together. Part B ends with the female voiceover reciting another poem until the screen shows only clouds.