From the stunning opening sequence of Utama (Our Home), we know we’re in for an intense experience, as we watch the sun rise above the mountains and hear the wind whispering across the Andean Altiplano. A man, small as an insect, walks towards the sun, his labored breathing blending into the soundtrack. Through that artful language of the senses, we are able to grasp the struggle for survival in a land where the scarcity of water dooms its inhabitants.
Alejandro Loayza Grisi, the director and screenwriter who has previous experience as a still photographer and DOP on documentary films, directs this co-production between Bolivia, Uruguay, and France with confidence and sensibility, while his father Marcos Loayza, a well-known Bolivian filmmaker, is one of the producers. The three Uruguayans on the team — Federico Moreira as sound designer and producer, Barbara Alvarez as cinematographer, and award-winning Fernando Epstein (Whisky, Gigante, Monos) as editor — add their own professionality. The script uses only essential dialogue and most of it is in Quechua, the ancient language of the indigenous people. It, too, is threatened with extinction as Spanish, the language of the Conquistadores, overtakes the culture. None of this is hammered home but delivered in subtle, carefully timed and layered brushstrokes as the narrative unfolds.
The story revolves around an elderly couple, Virginio and Sisa, played with understated dignity by local non-pros Jose Calcina and Luisa Quispe. Loayza has done a masterful job sharing his script with them in workshops and allowing them to act naturally and effortlessly. They show us the familiarity and intimacy of their daily routines, as the old shepherd tends to his llamas and his wife spins llama wool or fetches water from a distant, drying pump. The animals act as a chorus and the humming sounds they make become a melody. Ears adorned with colorful yarn, their haughty heads seem to comment on the action as they follow the shepherd with a patient gaze. Affection between humans is expressed in tacit terms: the gift of a stone, the knitting of a baby’s clothes.
The arrival of their grandson, known as Clever, who was brought up in the city by his father and raised speaking only Spanish, disrupts the ancient rites and routines of his grandparents. We have become so accustomed to the location out of time that we are shaken when Clever uses a cell phone and wears contemporary clothes. Played convincingly by Santos Choque, this urbanized grandson urges them to leave the parched land for a more comfortable life in the city. The secondary characters, who are part of a pilgrimage to the mountain peaks, are less spontaneous as they perform religious rituals.
The conflict begins to play out as Clever endures the silence of his taciturn grandfather. He reacts to his grandson’s presence with sullen, tough love, and suffers the emigration of his family as an offense to his own cultural heritage and identity. The community is torn between those who want to stay and those ready to leave, and as we watch the barren, cracked earth and the dying llamas, we understand their dilemma. The camera reveals an ominous, enormous condor flying high in the sky, then gently landing near the grandfather, who is silently preparing for his own demise. The condor too is threatened with extinction, as are the Aymara and Quechua cultures that revere it as a symbol of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
Barbara Alvarez’s cinematography beautifully captures the luminosity of the high altitude landscapes. The camera angles are always calibrated and surprising, as when we see a couple resting in bed from an overhead angle, or a shepherd’s face reflected in the water of a hand basin.
Sound is another of film’s outstanding features, along with the sparing use of music to enhance the drama and the desolate beauty of the Bolivian highlands. After we are lulled by the humming of the llamas and the whispers of the quena, an Andean flute, a woman’s wailing song delivers an emotional jolt to the narration (the voice is Luzmila Carpio’s, a revered Bolivian singer who uses birdsongs as inspiration.) Fernando Cabrera, another Uruguayan on the team, composed the closing song, which unleashes a final emotion.
It has been fifty-three years since Jorge Sanjines’s Blood of the Condor brought the struggles of indigenous Bolivians to world cinemas. Utama is a worthy successor that is timely in dealing with the double threat of climate change and cultural extinction. It is a necessary, essential film that will hopefully travel far and wide and impact audiences with its urgent, primal cinematic language.
Director and scriptwriter: Alejandro Loayza Grisi
Cast: Jose Calcina, Luisa Quispe, Santos Choque
Producers: Santiago Loayza Grisi, Federico Moreira, Marcos Loayza, Jean-Baptiste Bailly-Maitre
Cinematography: Barbara Alvarez
Production design: Valeria Wilde
Editing: Fernando Epstein
Music: Luzmila Carpio, Veronica Perez, Cergio Prudencio, Fernando Cabrera
Sound Design: Federico Moreira; Location Sound: Fabian Oliver
Production companies: Alma (Bolivia), La Mayor (Uruguay), Alpha Films (France)
World sales: Alpha Films
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (World Cinema Drama Competition)
In Quechua, Spanish
94 minutes
