Eureka

Veteran slow-cinema auteur Lisandro Alonso and actor Viggo Mortensen reunite for a free-flowing triptych of interconnected meditations on colonialism past and present.

Beginning almost as a parody of Jauja (MIFF 2014), Eureka reintroduces us to Mortensen and Viilbjørk Malling Agger as a father and daughter, this time in a classic black-and-white western – complete with the earlier film’s Academy ratio and rounded-edge framing, except with a lot more gun-slinging revenge. Part two, shot in 1.85 and with Lynchian visual echoes, introduces us to a contemporary Lakota Sioux officer of the law on her rounds. Part three transports us to 1970s Brazil, the shift signalled by another change in aspect ratio (now 1.66) and a virtuoso, almost mythical, metamorphosis.

Eureka is Alonso’s most ambitious and experimental work yet, navigating temporal and geographical space in a genre-hopping, enigmatic and at times almost magic-realist contemplation of the legacy of colonisation on First Nations peoples. Working again with Jauja DOP Timo Salminen as well as co-cinematographer Mauro Herce (who shot Óliver Laxe’s Fire Will Come, MIFF 2019; and Mimosas, MIFF 2016), Alonso has created something truly unique, visually arresting and philosophically complex.

“Bristles with agile ideas and inventive image-making … Its elasticity of form and narrative perhaps alluding to a history forever repeating and doubling back onto itself.” – Variety