A shot of Earth from space seems an unexpected opening perspective for a film that zeroes in on a few square miles of the scrubby, starkly beautiful Tucumán Province in northern Argentina to tell a story of murder and courtroom drama. But Argentinian auteur Lucrecia Martel’s (Zama) finds striking universality in her first documentary, a compelling true-crime tale of indigenous dispossession and cultural erasure that could be set in a hundred different countries.
Multiples more gripping than its bland English title might suggest, Landmarks is a story 15 or so years in the telling. The case at its heart (summarised in this 2009 Amnesty report) involves the alleged murder of indigenous leader Javier Chocobar by three men, two of whom were armed ex-police officers.
The trio, we learn in lively court proceedings to which Martel’s cameras have total access, were trying to finagle a mining concern on ancestral land that belonged to the Chuschagasta people. When Chocobar and 20 or so others confront them on a recce, there’s a bad-tempered exchange, a scuffle and finally gunshots. At the end of it Chocobar lies dying, shot in the stomach.
It’s not Rashomon. Despite the confident testimony of the ex-cops, and even their walk-through recreation of the events in the valley that day, it’s pretty clear that Chocobar didn’t shoot himself. There’s even dramatic home video footage that culminates in the camera rolling down a hillside when shots ring out. But the question of whether justice will be served hangs over the film. And judging by the teary, anxious faces of the Chuschagastans in the courtroom, it’s not a foregone conclusion. ‘No one in court listens to them anymore,’ one of the accused is heard saying as they leave the scene of the crime.
It’s an intimate pinhole camera capturing an IMAX-sized story
On that, at least, Martel fully concurs with these deeply unsympathetic men. The second half of Landmarks takes temporary leave from the court to centre this indigenous community in its own story. Old photos belonging to Chocobar’s wife and others offer a sepia time capsule to scenes of domestic life, nightclubbing and summer days spent on sun-drenched beaches – brought to life with vivid soundscapes.
These montages are elegiac and affecting, especially when the psychological toll of being perceived as second class citizens is shared. Martel’s forensic doc shatters any sense that, for her fellow Argentinians, the colonial burden has been lifted. It’s an intimate pinhole camera capturing an IMAX-sized story.
Landmarks premiered at the Venice Film Festival.