DOUBLE FREEDOM

Double Freedom certainly falls under the “slow cinema” category but it also falls under the “dudes rock” umbrella. Buddy cop action movies or stoner comedies are often made the face of the “dudes rock” genre but there’s a whole other side of the masculine spectrum portrayed on screen. On paper, Double Freedom sounds like the type of arthouse film that people make those openly acceptable xenophobic jokes about because there are subtitles involved: an Argentinian film with minimal dialogue about a man and his dog living in the woods. But this has more in common with the opening scene of Commando than it does Persona or any other stereotypical “arthouse” movie.

Commando / Double Life

Men living in serine solitude and doing manual labor is another aspect of guys being dudes on the big screen. Double Freedom, and its predecessor Freedom (2001), prove that men are simple creatures. I don’t mean to offend anyone with my gender-specific assessment but it really doesn’t take much for the average single man to be content.

Lisandro Alonso’s latest film is this meme below come to life:

That’s not to say there aren’t any female-centric films like Freedom and Double Freedom. One could argue that Agnes Varda’s Vagabond or Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman helped pave the way for the films of Lisandro Alonso. But, unlike Vagabond and/or Jeanne Dielman, there isn’t a murder or a dead body at the end of Double Freedom. No one will use the films of Lisandro Alonso as case studies for male loneliness or male solitude the way folks prop up Jeanne Dielman as a feminist statement.

Alonso showing the male protagonist’s daily routine did remind me of Jeanne Dielman on a surface level.

Jeanne Dielman / Double Life

In Double Freedom we follow Miseal 25 years after the events of the first film. And by events, I mean the same solo routine of eat, sleep, chop wood, repeat. He has his manmade one-room shack, a makeshift kitchen, a new dog and a radio. He also has regular access to venture out in to the modern world when he needs to. And he’s happy. It needs to be emphasized that he isn’t sad or depressed.

The difference this time around is that Miseal’s life is disrupted when he’s forced to take care of his mentally ill sister. I don’t pretend to be an expert on the current social and political events taking place in Argentina but nationwide budget cuts are closing many mental health facilities leaving the patients/residents to fend for themselves or to be released to the care of family members that aren’t equipped to provide the proper care. In Double Freedom, the facility that houses Miseal’s sister closes and he has to take care of her. The problem is he lives in a one room shack on the outskirts of a farm. He isn’t familiar with the medication his sister needs and she’s prone to wander off and go missing. None of this is good and, *spoiler*, there is no clear resolution in the end.

I liken both Freedom and Double Freedom to the cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Carlos Reygadas. The films of Lisandro Alonso, Weerasethakul and Reygadas all focus on nature, repetition/routine, lone main characters, etc. What sets Alonso apart from the other two filmmakers is that everything is rooted in reality from start to finish (Jauja and Eureka being the obvious exceptions to this). In Double Freedom, there is no traditional payoff. The audience isn’t rewarded for sitting through “nothing” for two hours with a sudden scene of Miseal transforming in to an animal out of nowhere or ripping his own head off like we get in the films of Reygadas or Weerasethakul. Alonso commits to the routine of the film from start to finish (even when things are slightly disrupted).

Post Tenebres Lux / Double Life

I don’t know who this movie was made for besides me. I can think of two other friends I would recommend this to. Otherwise, this is a movie with 25 years worth of history that you have to intentionally seek out. You don’t just stumble upon something like this. But for anyone curious, I thought this was a masterful film.