Lisandro Alonso’s heady, intoxicating Eureka opens on a pristine beach where a Native American musician sings toward the sun. None of what he says is subtitled, though it’s apparent that his personal history, as well as that of his people, colors every word. When his chant concludes, the man walks slowly inland in one of the protracted transitional sequences in which Alonso specializes. Of all the practitioners of so-called “slow cinema,” the Argentine filmmaker excels at making even the most anti-dramatic actions riveting.
Eventually, the Native singer comes to an overlook where he spots a wagon in the distance. In the back of the vehicle sits a grizzled gunslinger named Murphy (Viggo Mortensen). Up to this point, Eureka has the feel of an ethnographic documentary. But with the arrival of a bona fide movie star, the ambience shifts toward the thorny fantasyland of the American western.
The genre trappings are familiar,...
Eventually, the Native singer comes to an overlook where he spots a wagon in the distance. In the back of the vehicle sits a grizzled gunslinger named Murphy (Viggo Mortensen). Up to this point, Eureka has the feel of an ethnographic documentary. But with the arrival of a bona fide movie star, the ambience shifts toward the thorny fantasyland of the American western.
The genre trappings are familiar,...
- 10/10/2023
- by Keith Uhlich
- Slant Magazine
Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, which premiered as a Special Screening at this year’s Cannes, begins as a parodic reworking of the filmmaker’s last feature, 2014’s Jauja. There, Viggo Mortensen played a Danish captain crossing inhospitable Argentinian territory in the 1880s with his daughter (Viilbjørk Malling Agger), while encountering what from his perspective are “natives” to be fearfully avoided; Eureka renders that feature’s “not without my daughter” elements as a black-and-white Western set in an indeterminate any-Western-town of America. Mortensen and Agger are once again father-and-child, but this time he’s a considerably dirtier and more disreputable cowboy type. In impeccable academy-ratio black-and-white with rounded […]
The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/24/2023
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Lisandro Alonso’s Eureka, which premiered as a Special Screening at this year’s Cannes, begins as a parodic reworking of the filmmaker’s last feature, 2014’s Jauja. There, Viggo Mortensen played a Danish captain crossing inhospitable Argentinian territory in the 1880s with his daughter (Viilbjørk Malling Agger), while encountering what from his perspective are “natives” to be fearfully avoided; Eureka renders that feature’s “not without my daughter” elements as a black-and-white Western set in an indeterminate any-Western-town of America. Mortensen and Agger are once again father-and-child, but this time he’s a considerably dirtier and more disreputable cowboy type. In impeccable academy-ratio black-and-white with rounded […]
The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Cannes 2023: Lisandro Alonso on Eureka first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 5/24/2023
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Since his striking, transportive drama Jauja in 2014, we’ve been waiting for Lisandro Alonso’s follow-up. News first arrived in 2018 as we learned of Eureka, an ambitious project spanning a time period between 1870 and 2019, with a focus on Native American culture and locations spanning across the world.
The story, made up of four parts, will “make the link between times and continents.” “I would like to film places, people, and cultures that I regret not to see today on big or small screens,” Alonso said. “I would be very curious to know what happened to those who then embodied the Amerindian community, how they live today, how they survive. I would really like to understand what it is like to be a Native American nowadays.”
While the production was already underway and then halted in Portugal when the pandemic hit, Variety now reports more details and the first casting news.
The story, made up of four parts, will “make the link between times and continents.” “I would like to film places, people, and cultures that I regret not to see today on big or small screens,” Alonso said. “I would be very curious to know what happened to those who then embodied the Amerindian community, how they live today, how they survive. I would really like to understand what it is like to be a Native American nowadays.”
While the production was already underway and then halted in Portugal when the pandemic hit, Variety now reports more details and the first casting news.
- 8/4/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Following his star turn in “Jauja,” a major hit at the 2014 Cannes Festival, Viggo Mortensen will re-team with Argentine director Lisandro Alonso on “Eureka,” one of the boldest upcoming art films from Latin America.
Mortensen, who takes the lead role in “Eureka’s” first part, will be joined by France’s Chiara Mastroianni, a Cesar Award best actress nominee this year for “On a Magical Night,” and Portugal’s Maria de Medeiros (“Pulp Fiction”).
In a nod towards “Jauja,” Mortensen once more takes the role of a father, here Murphy, searching for a daughter, again played by Denmark’s Viilbjørk Malling Agger, who has been kidnapped in “Eureka” by an outlaw, Randall. Despite the actors reprising similar roles, the film is not a sequel.
In addition, the setting for Part 1 of “Eureka,” entitled “Western,” is no longer Argentina’s Patagonia but a lawless township in 1870 on the U.S.-Mexico border,...
Mortensen, who takes the lead role in “Eureka’s” first part, will be joined by France’s Chiara Mastroianni, a Cesar Award best actress nominee this year for “On a Magical Night,” and Portugal’s Maria de Medeiros (“Pulp Fiction”).
In a nod towards “Jauja,” Mortensen once more takes the role of a father, here Murphy, searching for a daughter, again played by Denmark’s Viilbjørk Malling Agger, who has been kidnapped in “Eureka” by an outlaw, Randall. Despite the actors reprising similar roles, the film is not a sequel.
In addition, the setting for Part 1 of “Eureka,” entitled “Western,” is no longer Argentina’s Patagonia but a lawless township in 1870 on the U.S.-Mexico border,...
- 8/4/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Like each of Lisandro Alonso‘s cinematic offerings that came before – La Libertad, Los Muertos, Fantasma and Liverpool – the Un Certain Regard debuted, Fipresci Prize winning Jauja regards the solitary man facing the exactings of life, nature and the human spirit. But something is quite different here. There seems to be some kind of scripted narrative, lavish costuming and even what many would call a proper movie star in the robustly mustachioed Viggo Mortensen. Yet by embracing these glacial shifts in the filmmaking process itself, Alonso has elevated his art from contemplatively ethnographic to something much more strange, exciting, illusive and illuminating.
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
- 8/25/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Jauja isn’t for everyone. This is an art western that revels in cryptic, languid surrealism, giving short shrift to conventional narrative and characterization. In short, you’ve got to have an appetite for watching a forlorn man painstakingly stumble up a rocky hill, and then down the other side. Then up another hill. And back down again. A dog shows up. More clambering. That’s Jauja, folks
Wait! Come back! It’s actually really good! Despite director Lisandro Alonso’s disregard for propulsive storytelling and snappy dialogue, Jauja is a gripping, beautiful experience, complete with a magnetic lead performance by Viggo Mortenson.
Set in the late 19th century, Mortenson plays Gunnar Dinesen, a Danish captain dispatched to Patagonia. Leading a gaggle of dissolute soldiers, Dinesen and his men scratch out an uncertain existence on a sliver of land between sea and desert. It’s never entirely clear what their mission is,...
Wait! Come back! It’s actually really good! Despite director Lisandro Alonso’s disregard for propulsive storytelling and snappy dialogue, Jauja is a gripping, beautiful experience, complete with a magnetic lead performance by Viggo Mortenson.
Set in the late 19th century, Mortenson plays Gunnar Dinesen, a Danish captain dispatched to Patagonia. Leading a gaggle of dissolute soldiers, Dinesen and his men scratch out an uncertain existence on a sliver of land between sea and desert. It’s never entirely clear what their mission is,...
- 4/6/2015
- by David James
- We Got This Covered
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