Within the first shot of “El Gran Movimiento,” the second characteristic from the Bolivian director Kiro Russo, who additionally wrote the script, the digital camera zooms in from excessive above La Paz towards a half-standing constructing. Because the picture will get nearer to floor stage, the sounds beneath — site visitors, building, presumably voices — develop louder. All through the opening montage, Russo friends on the metropolis by way of a defamiliarizing lens, surveying the buzzing wires of the aerial cable automobiles or pondering the reflections of autos and other people in glass.
But “El Gran Movimiento” can’t merely be described as a metropolis symphony — or just as something in any respect. You’d be forgiven for assuming that lengthy stretches of it include vérité documentary, however this cryptic, experimental movie, shot on 16 millimeter, unfolds in a never-quite-identifiable mode that blends nonfiction and performative components. That a lot of it’s fastidiously staged and framed is definitely clear by two-thirds in, when the principal topics all of a sudden have interaction in a synth-scored dance sequence.
The indirect plot, not simply apprehended from the movie itself, entails Elder (Julio César Ticona), a part of a gaggle of miners who’ve walked for seven days to La Paz to seek out jobs; he and his pals take work hauling produce, however Elder has a nasty cough. Individually, for a time, Russo follows Max (Max Bautista Uchasara), a raveled man who lives within the woods and makes people cures for issues like Elder’s.
“El Gran Movimiento” has clearly been designed as an intuitive expertise, and frustrations are to be anticipated. Russo is extra interested by discovered surreality than in narrative. However as an incantatory train, “El Gran Movimiento” is pleasingly disorienting.
El Gran Movimiento
Not rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Operating time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters.