CELDA 211
("Cell 211", EF, 2009, directed by Daniel Monzón)
Two hands, a lighter, dark, hard side light from the left. A skinny man heats up a cigarette filter, the hot plastic shapes with your fingers, it drags on the floor of his cell until he has made a sharp blade. Then he opens up above the sink wrists. The Camera registers this suicide, distant-watching, waiting to be shaded into black image. A pessimistic prelude to a pessimistic film, more precisely, a prison film, the subject of her anyway gloomy genre par excellence.
prison movies, whether in the escapee or gangster version as dedicated or hard Sozialmelodram thriller, telling the core are two kinds of people: prison guards and prisoners. Some are in the genre are the mirror of the other, both one side of the same coin. Without guards no prisoners. Prisoners without any guards. The sum of the genre brought Alan Clarke in 'Scum' ("Scum" in 1977 and 1979) to the point. As explained an anarchist - a figure that counts as a traitor and a capo, the band leader, the eternal victim, the followers of the standard types of the genre - a guard during a coffee break, they nevertheless are very similar: guards as prisoners disciplining the rhythm of the system subjected to imprisonment, to be constantly monitored, the most of the day are behind bars, followed by dull routines and commands to consider the contempt sanctions. There is only one difference: the prisoners are not here voluntarily.
Daniel Monzón "Cell 211" is coming to this conflict and puts it at the same time on the head by the young guard Juan (Alberto Ammann) at the first visit the day before makes before his regular starting a prisoner against his will, he throws in the midst of a bloody prison riot, so that he is a prisoner must spend in order to survive. He is a kind of male friendship with the violent Mala Madre (Daniel Monzón) that the leader of the uprising. Over the following events, he is increasingly becoming a real criminal. Soon it exceeds Mala Madre on Verve as rebels and killers. Of course he first has little choice. But then later do not care, because state power adjustable outside him every opportunity to return to his normal life and he is too far gone anyway. What to say Monzón is obvious: a company that designs the prisons and maintain or establish any disciplinary institutions, but institutions that produce one thing: prisoners, emotionally and intellectually stunted people who communicate mainly through violence, structural and physical. You know no other way, the prison keeps. And Mala Madre is quite right when he remarked in regard to his rebellion, because that would mean out there just one thing: violence.
Daniel Monzón Mala Madre is an unusually complex, even contradictory figure in the genre: a rebel with pitch-black, sparkling eyes, once railed against drugs, then even habitually does cocaine, sympathy sets as well as ice cold calculus of the day, a leader of his disciples is death (Mala Madre - bad mother - is of course a "Voice Name"). And despite his sociopathic appearance, he ultimately acts as one of Hobsbawm's social rebels. Mala Madre has nothing to lose and little to gain and so he runs against the order, not blindly, but with the means of an archaic bandit leader. His ostensible aim is to Improve prison conditions and in its self-understanding, he differs little from the ETA activists, which he takes as hostage in order to give effect to its demands. Finally, it is just the old guard Juan, who convinces him that will not change anything anyway, if he is out there of which can be fobbed off with empty promises. What remains is the bloody excess, the rabid uprising, as he was already at the end of Clarke's "Scum" and can cause perhaps because of its toll a little.
"Cell 211" in the tradition of socially engaged prison film. Monzón Film is not an epic like Jacques Audiard brilliant "A Prophet" ("A Prophet ', 2009), not a grueling trip into nihilism as John Hill Coats' Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead "(" Welcome to hell ", 1988), no formal experiment as Sidney Lumet's" The Hill "(" The Hill ", 1965) or Nicolas Winding Refn's" Bronson "(2008). "Cell 211" is more in the tradition of George W. Hills stilprägendem "The Big House" ("Hell Behind Bars", 1930) and Don Siegel's gloomy "Riot in Cell Block 11" ("Riot in Cell Block 11", 1954) and John Frankenheimer's desperate wireless TV drama "Against the Wall" - flawless, classic genre films with no frills. His bitter end is reminiscent of the genre films of the 70s, when there were still functioning film industries in Europe and compromise have not been enforced by the bodies of cinema. This makes "Cell 211" in spite of small holes and logic flaws that afflict a very refreshing, welcome movie.
is This text first appeared in Splatting Image , Issue 84
Cell 211
OT: Celda 211
EF 2009 to 113 min
Regis: Daniel Monzón - Drehbuch: Daniel Monzon, Jorge Guerricaechevarría, nach einem Roman von Francisco Pérez ball boy - Kamer: Carles Gusi - Produzenten: Alvaro Augustin, John Gordon, Emma Chandeliers Gomes Borja Pena - Musik: Roque Baños - Schnitt: Cristina Pastor - Besetzung: Luis Tosar, Alberto Ammann Antonio Resin, Manuel Morón, Carlos Bardem, Marta Etura a
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