THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 15

"black bread," spain, dir. agustí villaronga

what could be more soul rending than a brutal, protracted civil war? being poor and on the losing side of one. at least that seems to be the overarching theme of "black bread," the story of a small farming village in catalonia that is re-divided by political allegiance and personal vendetta after a double homicide in the aftermath of the spanish civil war. school age andreu comes across the bodies of a man and his son in the woods. before the dying boy kicks it, he whispers the name of a "monster" said to live in a nearby cave. andreu's father, a republican, is suspected of the murders and jailed by the local mayor, a francoist and former suitor of andreu's mother. andreu goes to live with his grandmother, aunt and cousins. in his ardor to exonerate his father, he unearths buried secrets that shake his prepackaged view of ideals and good and evil in conflict. despite a series of quickly paced twists, "black bread," its title a metaphor for the steerage class lot of the not already privileged, is ultimately about a simple but age old truth: republican or fascist, the rich are victorious because they have the means to win. the film brilliantly expresses a supposed diametric of good and evil in the alternation of brightly lit midday scenes and nighttime scenes of imagined phantasms, even as andreu's understanding of the difference blurs to disillusionment. unfortunately, "black bread" leaves too many plot threads untied. why are we supposed to turn on andreu's club handed female cousin, cast initially as a victim of war and abuse then suddenly repurposed into a vindictive slut of a witch? why the introduction of the vaguely homosexual consumptive at the monastery? it seemed as if "black bread" was trying to excuse its characters' every lapse in ethical judgment by their destitution. the film swept the spanish film awards, and i wonder if that wasn't the result of the collective spanish will to exonerate itself from the responsibility of history. poverty is awful, for sure, but... if nothing else, "black bread" is intensely thought provoking. españa, una! españa, grande! españa, libre!