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3 stories that are totally unrelated but are told parallel to one another
rather than one after the other: 1. X (Mariano Llinás) witnesses a
shootout by chance, and for some reason he grabs the briefcase the
shootout was about and even shoots somebody to keep it, before making his
hotelroom his hideout for months on end, trying to figure out what the
whole thing was actually about and what significance the content of the
briefcase could have, and over the weeks, he makes up a quite fantastic
crime yarn out of the documents in the briefcase and newspaper clippings
that might not even be related to the story. It's only when one of his
colleagues tracks him down to the hotel that he figures it might be not as good
a hideout as he has though it would bet, and he hands over the documents to the
authorities - and it seems after that justice goes its way .. 2. Z
(Walter Jakob) has just started a new job that bores him to death, when out of pure boredom
he starts investigating the life of his deceased
predecessor Cueva, who was obviously a man as inconspicious as can be, but
eventually, Z discovers Cueva's dark secret: He was the head of an exotic
animals smuggling ring, and looking for more information on Cueva and his
suspected treasure almost get Z killed in a fire with a dying lion and
later almost get him a wife and a farm, but Z is determined to find out
the truth about Cueva - a quest that eventually leads him to India and
leaves him emptyhanded. 3. Because of some silly, drunken bet, H (Agustín
Mendilaharzu) is hired to go up the river to photograph
monoliths, but he soon has to discover there is someone ahead of him
blowing up the monoliths for H's employer's rival. Eventually, H catches up
with the guy who's blowing up the monoliths, César, and since they might
work for opponents but are not enemies themselves (actually, neither of them
has to much of an idea of what they are actually doing), they team up, and
César lets H take picutes before blowing the monoliths up. But then they
lose their track, are incarcerated by the army and held for weeks - before
they are released because they haven't done anything wrong (and the army
couldn't care less about a handful of monoliths) At a bit over
four hours, the film is of course a tad long, objectively speaking, and it
could have done with some trimming (at least an hour if I have calculated
correctly) without destroying the film's narrative core and deliberately
slow pace, to be more appealing to a general audience. But the running
time set aside, Historias Extraordinarias comes close to being a
masterpiece, a film that tells its stories with a casualness reminiscent
of Lou Ye's Suzhou River in its
refusal to properly focus on its protagonists and its
less-than-all-knowing narrator as well as its fresh, unspectacular approach to genre
cinema. And despite its (over-)long running time, writer/director Mariano
Llinás is an accomplished enough filmmaker to insert fresh ideas into
his story/stories until the very end to keep the audience's interest
throughout. In a word, better set aside 4 hours to see this film, you
won't regret it!
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find Extraordinary Stories at adultvideouniverse.com
