The Militant (Manuel Nieto, Uruguay) By Howard Feinstein / Filmmakermagazine.comOne of the most fully realized films I've seen in ages, it's better repped by its Spanish title, El Lugar del hijo (The Place of the Son). The tenuous attachment of the 25-year-old protagonist, Ariel Cruz (non-pro Felipe Dieste, pictured at top), to radical student politics in 2002 in a Uruguay bogged down in the economic catastrophe known as "The Crisis" is only a secondary topic. Plus the guy is hardly radical: He's a slacker. The film is about legacy, about what Cruz's generation inherited from the one prior, and it involves mismanagement of more than finances.Nieto (The Dog Pound) has cojones. He courageously eschews conventions that would serve as more surefire guarantees of good box-office. In the role of the perpetually unkempt Cruz, he cast a young man actually crippled in an accident early in life — his speech slurred, his walk crooked — to drive home from first frame to last a metaphor: Uruguay has itself become malformed, stagnant, and has allowed not only its economy to slip away but also, by Latin American standards anyway, a relatively high level of culture and education.Cruz is so extremely laid back that I'm not sure if his unchangingly blank countenance is a function of Dieste's condition or the character's lack of will and enthusiasm. Nieto does not poke fun at the actor, who appears to relish the role, or at the character, whom he patiently tracks through humiliating situations in order to chart his transition from unflattering infantilism to adulthood.Early on, Cruz is called out of a meeting of students occupying a university building in Montevideo to find out that his father has suddenly died in his provincial hometown of Salto. Upon arrival, he has a few rude awakenings. Observing his Salto counterparts in (in)action jolts him into an awareness of their and his own schoolmates' paper-thin priorities. A poseur who has always depended upon his dad, he hasn't a clue about relations among workers, students, and the state—but then neither do the other so-called activists. In order to feel as if he were doing something for the cause, whatever that may be, he volunteers for a hunger strike by slaughterhouse workers — whom he will encounter once again, in a stroke of script genius, under very different circumstances.He discovers that his father was an irresponsible debtor and reckless manager whose mess becomes his bequest. Were it not for the somewhat self-serving push of the local notary, he is so laid back and oblivious that he would probably just ignore the world crashing down on him, no matter that it affects the lives and livelihoods of many others. The notary forces Cruz to spend time as a hilariously clumsy boss of the cowpunchers at the ranch he co-owns with the late father's estate. The deadline is immediate: the cattle must be rounded up, separated, and sold to avoid foreclosure on the family home (which the father's mistress has taken over anyway). The ornery ranch hands haven't been paid in six months, and the somewhat feudal agricultural sector of this country of three million still has muscle to flex.A nod to d.p. Arauco Hernandez-Holz, who shoots with a seemingly intuitive architectonic sensibility the spaces between large structures, within tiny bedrooms, and around packs of young people, as well as such solid markers as doors and windows for blocking, towering glass walls for figurative encasement, and brutal stone facades for obstruction.

This was a very strange film. I saw it at the San Francisco Film Festival. It was promoted as "a student leader fighting against the bosses of striking workers" and "experiences a coming of age crisis when he inherits his father's ranch". It said "the radical becomes the boss and finds himself responsible for paying back wages to the gauchos stiffed by his father". To me, that sounded like an interesting political film. Unfortunately, that's not exactly the film I saw. My impression is that first, it showed the disorganization and chaos of alleged strikes by students and workers and how really nothing is accomplished and people are just hanging out getting stoned or having sex or quitting after a few days of complaints. That part reminded me of Berkeley back in the 1970's when people were tired of fighting and just gave up to party and hang out. The second part of the film, about the father's ranch, was pathetic in a different way. The so- called radical was not in charge at all. The father's notary was the boss and the son really had no responsibility. He was just doing whatever the notary told him to do. I kept waiting for something else to happen, but it was so depressing to see the weakness of everyone. They all seemed resigned to their fate, even when they were protesting. The notary was in control. The son did NOT confront him or try to become the boss, perhaps because there was no way he could deal with the father's debts. Anyway, besides all that depressing stuff, the really strange thing was that as you watch the actor in the lead role, you gradually realize that he has some kind of disability but it was never revealed exactly what it was, never mentioned, never referred to, and never a part of the story. It kept me on edge throughout the film because I kept assuming that it would become part of the story but it never did. He was treated exactly the same as everyone else and he did not seem to feel he had any disability. Later I decided that it was impressive to have this actor do the role. We tend to assume that a disability will become part of the story but this film showed that it ain't necessarily so. Perhaps the film was trying to say that despite the backwardness of the country and the society there, that at least they were more advanced in not stigmatizing this young man.