nobody knows anything
by Douglas Messerli
Asghar Farhadi (screemwriter and director) Todos
lo saben (Everybody Knows) / 2018, USA 2019
The reviews seemed generally polite, but to my way of thinking, did not
do justice to this complexly stimulating work.
Those early scenes are obviously overwhelming. Who are all these people?
And why are they gathering with their wives, husbands, and children in this
small Madrid suburban town? We soon recognize that Laura (Penélope Cruz) has
traveled the furthest, without her husband, but with her two children, Irene
(Carla Campra), and the younger son Diego (Iván Chavero), from Argentina,
evidentially the for one of the first times since she left the small community
with her husband Alejandro (Ricardo Darín).
We soon recognize Laura’s sisters Mariana (Elvira Mínguez)—who reveals
that she and her husband are in the process of divorce—and her younger sister,
Ana (Inma Cuesta) who is about to marry Joan (Roger Casamajor). And we are just
a quickly introduced to the father of this clan, the widowed and stubbornly
independent-minded Antonio (Ramón Barea), so advanced in age that we might
almost imagine this could become a kind comic work about dying. Altman might
have turned it into that.
It’s not. At least not literally. The family is, in fact, not the real
focus of this work, although they certainly capture the majority of the frames
early on. For the real relationships in this work exist not in the
present, with the marriage of Ana and Joan, but in the past and in the future,
the last of which quickly slaps this film into motion as the carefree teenager
Irene suddenly encounters a young local boy, Felipe (Sergio Castellanos), with
whom, almost as suddenly as they arrive, she goes on a wild motorcycle ride
through country roads, she at the helm. We almost perceive immediately that the
film is truly about her and fears for the dangers which she may encounter.
Yet Farhadi, as always, is a sly story-teller, slowly enveloping the
entire community into this tale about love past and present. As the young
couple wind their way up the staircase of the local church—naughtily opting out
of the wedding of the couple just below—Irene discovers that the walls of the
past contain the legendary loves of the time, mostly just with the initials
Americans might have carved in the roots of trees. One of them reveals an L and
a P, which Felipe reveals
I
read a recent article about how trees interconnect with one another through
their roots: and this is a literal rendering of that. These individuals all
know each other far too well, and far better than any outsider might ever be
able to. We, the audience, are simply the visitors to the wedding and its
after-events, far too slow to comprehend the love, bitterness, and hate that
the village itself has nourished. As Paco tells his workers very early in the
film, you have to keep the newly picked grapes away from the others if you
intend to create a great wine.
But we know, even as outsiders, that the problem is that in such a
community the past can never be separated from the present. When Laura’s
daughter Irene suddenly goes missing, the kidnapper(s) leave a terrible message
in the form of newspaper clippings from another past kidnapping, in which
evidently the young girl had been killed. The kidnappers reassure her that if
she goes to the police, Irene too will be murdered.
For a more reasoned logic, Laura must turn to her youthful lover, Paco, who advises her to pretend that she is attempting to raise the money the kidnappers demand—despite the fact, she is forced to admit, despite the village perceptions, her husband and she have no money, he having been unemployed for the past two years?
Like an onion being pealed, bit by bit, we discover what even we’re not
sure are truths. Is Irene actually Paco’s child, as Laura ultimately claims.
Did she sell the estate which Paco has turned into a profitable enterprise at
an enormous loss, simply to escape the town or the need to run on with her
current lover? And why are the kidnappers now sending messages to Paco’s wife,
Bea (Bárbara Lennie) as well?
When she finally summons her husband, Alejandro to return, he too seems
almost like a suspect, although an unwitting and rather naïve version of such a
figure.
Although “everybody knows everything” in this community no one seems to
know anything really. Was it someone close to the family, a group of angry
workers from Paco’s fields, even Paco himself—particularly if he knew of the
paternity of Irene? These are the questions the film keeps demanding that we
consider.
Perhaps simply out of guilt or playing bluff, Paco offers his estate for
sale, never imagining, one must presume, that such a sale would have to take
place in order to bring back Irene.
The truth, in this world, is almost too difficult to reveal, and, as
Farhadi himself has suggested, the real truths, despite what we finally hear,
exist out of the film’s frame. Did Laura herself arrange for the kidnapping in
order to punish her childhood lover, to find money in order to survive with her
current husband? You need to see the movie and make your own conclusions. Yet
however you might interpret it, there are no longer any easy answers.
Nobody knows truly what made these figures act the way they did. Perhaps
not even them. The film ends with Laura gently unwrapping Irene’s legs and
bringing her back into family love. We can only suspect that, in fact, she has
introduced her into another generation of secrets of love and hate.
Los Angeles, July 21, 2019
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2019).
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