‘Slaughterhouse’: The cruel instinct of cinema

in its history ‘El matadero’, published in 1871, told the Argentine writer Esteban Echeverría, when a young Unitarian faced the federalsI was saying: “Yes, bestial strength and violence. Those are your weapons; infamous. Even the wolf, the tiger, the panther are strong like you. You should walk like them on all fours”. Is considered one of the most important titles in Argentine literature, fundamental in several respects. Despite its importance, no one dared to adapt it, given its macabre, violent and extremely violent character.

From there the idea of ​​’Matadero’ was born, with which Santiago Fillol, rather than adapting, exploits its premise to create parallels of horror between dictatorships. The story of Echeverría is set in the so-called Time of Roses, the dictatorial regime imposed by the military Juan Manuel de Rosa, who established himself, between 1835 and 1852, as the main head of the Argentine Confederation. The story is brutal, bloody and tremendously explicit, in which he portrays the Rosas government as a greedy meat eater, to the point of sacrificing 50 oxen in the middle of Lent, given the shortage of food in the city of Buenos Aires due to a flood that left the city isolated. The slaughterhouse becomes the metaphor of the barbarism perpetrated by Rosas.

Fillol doesn’t really dare to adapt this story, considered the first from Argentina. The director creates the cinema within the cinema, as he talks about the plot of the film an American director, played by Julio Perillán – fond of shady cards, as seen in ‘Demons your eyes’ – who decides to reinterpret the writing, transforming it into a film of the time, in which a group of breeders rebels against their masters and transforms them into meat to be consumed, a clear metaphor of how the people devour their exploiter, a symbol of unjust power and oligarchy. The point is that Fillol places this North American filmmaker’s project in Argentina in 1973, at the dawn of the coup that brought Videla to power.

A bold debut from Oliver Laxe’s regular collaborator

It is there that the tape puts its eye, drawing a parallel between the brutality of the Rosas regime and what happened later with that of Videla. Fillol, regular collaborator of Oliver Laxe’s screenplays, knows how to reinterpret the revolutionary character of Echeverría’s writing, a genuine indictment of dictatorial brutality. Sure, he does it in a contemporary key, giving weight to the horror story, which is more sensed than seen, but when it’s present, it’s hard to sustain it with one’s gaze.

Beyond the tribute, Fillol performs an authentic exercise in cinematic horror, of how the creepy takes over the cinematic gaze, of how the seventh art can be the pure expression of evil and violence. Given the rhythm it has, as well as its play of images, with impeccable photography, the work of Mauro Herce, who has already captured the beauty of horror in ‘Che Burns’; for both style and form, Fillol could be related to the cinema of Théo Court, more precisely to “Blanco en blanco”which also portrays the most uncomfortable moments of the emancipation process of Spanish America.

‘Matadero’ knows how to be a tribute to Echeverría’s writing, being a reinterpretation that preserves the spirit of the work, taking it to another dimension. Fillol makes his debut in style as a director of fiction and a completely radical look is already arriving in Argentine cinema.

Note: 7

The best: His fascinating photography, capable of capturing the beauty of horror.

Worse: His narration is confused in certain sequences.