Cinema is the ideal medium to show the vicissitudes of the human experience. More than that, it is an artform that is able to represent both the most banal experiences of daily life and the most bungling fantasies we can imagine.
That being the case, it is expected that cinema is a tool many directors use to illustrate their concerns, while at the same time creating a source of entertainment for those who want to live, through the characters they see on screen, lives different from their own. But like all good art, there must be a link that connects us to the images we see in the movie theater. And what better way to connect with people, if not by talking about family issues?
We all belong to a family nucleus made up of a mosaic of personalities that are often disparate. In this pastiche, there is always one person who is fundamental to our individual growth as human beings. This fascinating and important figure is the father. And since today is Father’s Day, we’ll talk about it.
We all know the typical archetype of a good-natured and kind father: the one who teaches the protagonist how to face adversity and stand up for himself. In the history of cinema, there is no shortage of iconic and special parents. For example, there’s Atticus Finch from the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, directed in 1962 by Robert Mulligan, who teaches her little daughter Scout how to cope with life’s difficulties and combat the injustices of the world.
There is also Don Vito Corleone, from Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), who despite not being exactly the best person in the world in moral terms, is always there to help his family and keep it together. Or there’s Edward Bloom, the main character of Tim Burton’s Big Fish (2003), who, thanks to his crazy and quirky stories, manages to transport his children to a yesterday that seems much better than today.
But what happens when this father figure is reneged by his children, or is simply looked upon with disdain? This type of paternofiliary relationship, often sharply pierced by resentment or accumulated anger, is what drives the story of three great films.
The first one is The Royal Tenenbaums, by Wes Anderson. In it, Royal (Gene Hackman) is the patriarch of the unique Tenenbaum family, which consists of three children and his ex-wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston). After a long-standing divorce, a series of ‘betrayals, failures and disasters’ occurred that left their mark on the family for two decades. But when the father reunites the family clan after finding out that he suffers from an alleged terminal illness, it turns out that re-establishing the broken ties is not as easy as it seems.
In this film, director Wes Anderson makes his first foray into the theme of family dramas, especially with regard to the father figure and his role in the family (which he would continue to develop in the future with movies such as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox).
If we go deep into The Royal Tenenbaums, it is easy to recognize the fact that there is a clear concern on the part of the director to explore the ways in which parenthood affects the emotional development of a family, as well as the ways in which the family organizes itself as a group in crisis situations. As this case study makes clear, being a good parent also requires maintaining affectionate and empathetic communication ties; a family is nothing if there is no love involved.
Without communication, the family falls apart. It is precisely that emotional rapport that the characters of The Royal Tenenbaums learn to perform that ends up saving the family. On the other hand, in Retablo, a Peruvian film by Álvaro Delgado Aparicio, this is not what happens.
This movie tells the story of the father-son relationship between Noé (Amiel Cayo), a middle-aged craftsman, and his son Segundo (Junior Bejar). Both are dedicated to the same work: putting together altarpieces, known as ‘retablos’ in the Peruvian culture.
A retablo is a kind of pictorial structure in the shape of a closet that is painted in bright colours and decorated with small handmade sculptures. These altarpieces are then sold to those who order them by commission. The stability of this art business, which has been a family tradition for several generations, is threatened by the discovery of a secret kept by Noé.
Without spoiling anything, it is important to note that such a revelation begins to cause problems for the reputation of the entire family, especially Noé’s.
Clearly, the conservative idiosyncrasy of the segment of the population portrayed in the film, as well as the radical stance it takes on controversial issues, proves to be very damaging to Segundo’s family, who begins to fall victim to the public slander of their peers. Hence, even Segundo starts to repudiate his father, repudiation that is also shared even more extremely by his mother. However, he soon realizes that this attitude does no good to anyone.
Ultimately, Segundo discovers that all intolerance does is destroy the love and respect that exists for the dignity of all those around us. Moreover, the unwillingness to empathize with the anguish of others leads to the crumbling of Noé and Segundo’s father-son relationship.. This is all because we, as people who are forced to make decisions during situations of emotional vulnerability, often sever our most sacred blood ties in order to keep a “clean face” in the eyes of those who would never love us as much as the people we are sacrificing in the process.
That’s why Retablo teaches us that any healthy parent-child relationship should renounce affective neglect, because there comes a point where the only products left by indifference are pain and repentance.
The third movie I want to talk about is Land and Shade, directed by Cesar Augusto Acevedo. This Colombian film tells the story of a peasant family that is going through difficult times. In this case, contrary to The Royal Tenenbaums, the sick person here is the son and not the father. The movie begins when Alfonso (Haimer Leal), after learning about the delicate health of his son Gerardo (Edison Raigosa), returns to the home he left more than 17 years ago. That being so, the patriarch must face not only the illness that afflicts Gerardo, but also the harsh treatment of his ex-wife and the indifference of his grandson whom he has just met.
Land and Shade is a film that tells us about loss and regret. Though it may seem sombre and pessimistic at first glance, this is actually a movie that invites us to evaluate the emotional ties we have with our relatives. It also urges us to reconsider the importance of making peace with a loved one before a tragedy occurs. That being so, although everything seems lost, in the end there is a glimmer of hope (or at least a chance to build a better future from the family union).
Abandonment, resentment between parents and children, and impotence are themes that these three movies handle with great maturity. In the same way, these films challenge the unpolluted perception that is often held of the figure of the father.
As the professor Pablo Martínez Samper from the University Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona puts it, in movies of this kind we usually see on screen “parents who at significant moments of their itinerary are no longer as perfect”, so that the failure of the so-called ‘ideal father’ in the face of the responsibilities they have towards their children “is installed at the epicenter of their plots like a new dramatic conflict.”
But everything doesn’t have to be bad. Just as in these films we are presented with situations that inexorably distress their protagonists in different ways, so too do these same stories show us the ways that exist to reconcile parents and children who have differences between them.
As we mentioned earlier, it would seem that the trio of parents we spoke of do not meet the archetype of “ideal father.” However, what these “cinematic fathers” lose in perfection, they gain in realism.
Real-life parents aren’t always perfect, as are Royal, Noé and Alfonso. That’s exactly what makes these kinds of movies great. Cinema should not always present idyllic visions of the family, but rather paternal representations that allow us to empathize with the characters and what they are experiencing. No matter how singular the situation our protagonists find themselves in, there will always be something about these fictional parents that remind us of our own.
Many times our parents falter, but there’s not much we can do about it other than sit with them and learn in the best way we can to be better people. That’s how they are and that’s how we appreciate them. When they move on to a better life, that’s how we’ll remember them.
