The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2019: The Aerial (2007), directed by Esteban Sapir

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Libertango", by Duo Bensa-Cardinot

       From Spain to Argentina, as our next film is Esteban Sapir’s The Aerial. The year is XX, several years since a mysterious incident stole the voices of everyone in the city, rechristening it The City Without A Voice. Everyone that is except the alluring and apparently faceless The Voice, beloved singer, and (secretly) her son Tomas, who in a monkey’s paw like deal gets to have a face but no eyes to see. Life finds a way in this City Without A Voice, but the ruthless Mr. TV (three guesses as to what he’s the boss) has in motion plans that not only threaten The Voice, but everyone. It’s all up to Ana, the little girl across the street and her parents to help The Voice and Tomas, thwart the machinations of Mr. TV, and save The City Without A Voice from a grisly fate. Also people inflate like balloons sometimes, if that’s your particular fetish.

       With most of the cast rendered unable to speak, it should come as no surprise that The Aerial decided to take the plunge and become an actual ‘silent movie’. However Esteban Sapir wasn’t interested in just paying homage to the silent movie era, he takes it to its logical conclusion. The city isn’t just some elaborate model ala Metropolis, it’s a vast papier-mache city, with mountains made out of newspaper and snow that looks like someone took a cheese grater to a bar of soap. The characters don’t just communicate through text, words are a known physical presence, able to be manipulated. The music shifts from keening, anxious strings and booming drums into jazz and salsa at the drop of the hat, never missing a beat All the little film tricks that made audiences head spin in 1926 find their way here, their obvious presence only adding to the surreality of a world of faceless women and guns that fire onomatopoeias. There are plenty of filmmakers that have utilized elements originating from the silent era, particularly the German Expressionist movement, I feel like The Aerial is the first movie I’ve seen tackle the medium on a conceptual level. A bit like every other thing written by Grant Morrison if you’re a comic book fan, or It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, if you’re a fan of obscure 80’s show from HBO.

The downside of going high-concept and surreal is any points you try to make are in danger of being lost in the white noise of weirdness, and that same has to be said of The Aerial. At a certain point in the film, I want to say half way in but I don’t know if it was that late, the film introduces some overt political themes, with Mr. TV and his minions representing Nazis and Ana and the protagonists representing the Jewish people. Which in and of itself is fine, you can never beat enough Nazis, but the problem is that the film up to that point was about human balloons and singing women without faces. It’s very jarring. While the subtext of Nazi ‘silencing’ Jewish voices becomes obvious after a moment’s thought, and art styles like surrealism have their origins in socio-economic criticism, that the film tries to make this point in such a fanciful, fairy-tale like world the film ends up making that real world issue feel abstract and ephemeral. Which is not what you want if you’re trying to make a statement in my opinion, and considering this film has a scene where a character is strapped to a giant swastika, I feel like that was the director’s intent.

       Still I will not deny The Aerial is a unique film, possessed of a unique charm and style. I can’t think of anything quite like it except maybe The American Astronaut, and that’s mainly because they’re both in black & white and got a bit of a ramshackle look to them. If you liked that movie, or you like weirdo movies (silent or otherwise), or you take a lot of psilocybin, then this is the film for you this Halloween. Slip on your headphones, grab a fresh box of TV Food, and have yourself a good time.