William, the New Judo Master (2016)

 

Directors: Omar Guzmán and Ricardo Silva

Screenplay: Omar Guzmán and Ricardo Silva

Cast: Arak Bernal, William Clauson, Edward Coward, Pako Houston and Hoze Meléndez

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Beginning with a prologue, of a body of a being split in two after defeat, one half landing into the seas and the other to the earth below, the Mexican avant-garde film William, the New Judo Master to be frank does not go the direction you would presume, but for myself also becomes disjointed. The prologue sets up an immortal being who moves forwards in their existence in a world of continual death, and we can definitely establish the Devil is here too, with his head completely covered with black fur, with horns and glowing red eyes, watching on in his beige suit at the world around him.

Among the many tangents is of Swedish-American singer William Clauson, one of the first people to introduce the song La Bamba outside of Mexico in the fifties, here playing himself an old man who lives in exile in Mexico, eventually moving to a place of care whilst his home is completely ransacked by removal people, a mysterious safe becoming their obsession as they cannot open it. Among such tangents includes an older musical impersonator of Clauson, who has hired three male sex workers to love him, who get the most prominent scenes but is one of a few. In the middle of all this are various different pieces. We see the oldest tree in existence, at 95550 years old, the voice over from the immortal being (also playing a fictionalised version of the real Clauson), almost becoming the lament of the tree itself as it contemplates 9,550 years of existence and what transpired since then. We see a ship being sunk deliberately and shots of nature among many.

A lot of the film does evoke the many films of this ilk from the 2010s, many from the film festival and especially becoming much more easier to witness on the likes of the MUBI streaming platform, the many prolific films which defy a real categorisation that are a series of vignettes and aspects, blurring documentary with other factors. Some succeed, but there are many and they can seem completely disjointed in context. The theme that William... is grasping at, for me personally, is very simplistic. Quite nihilistic, as we vary between an older man who talks of removing his ten dollar bill from a collection plate at a church when it is passed among the church congregation a second time, to the immortal being lamenting over tombstones everyone they know being dead. It does, frankly, come off as sycophantic as a lot of films and media from the time it comes from have this same mentality, losing profoundness as a result.

There are also many scenes which never seem to connect. What is the connection, with a startling sequence, of a military boat being deliberately sunk, with the cameras inside allowing us to see its first person sinking into the ocean, to the older Clauson impersonator, whose life seems mainly to drift among bars at night and has a couple of musical numbers, one breaking from the static still camera shots with a gliding camera around his performance? Or the scenes of quad and motocross bikes on roads at night, soaked in orange-yellow street lights, and even involve a quad bike dragging a casket behind itself, again another vivid image? It evokes Chris Marker's Sans Soleil (1983), a work of seemingly separate fragments which yet connected together with profoundness in his chronology mostly based in Japanese culture of the early nineteen eighties, but the vividness of that essay film was stronger whilst here, with its scenes involving cuts to microbes under a microscope in monochrome and tangents with fishermen swatting off squid, the images fascinate, but they do not fully connect. Even Clauson's story feels like it could have been expanded further, as his narrative intertwines Mexico and Sweden alongside the United States, including the fact he opened a Mexican restaurant in Stockholm later in his life, after a career with popularity and even some film roles, and that William... briefly goes to Sweden itself to a sanatorium that has long been abandoned he went to.

The structure of the film itself was what failed me on this, with disparate pieces that, separate, would be compelling by themselves stretched out. As they are, a lot of them do feel lacking for everyone which does stand out. Some, especially the man with his three rented lovers, especially could have been more fleshed out and compelling, only reduced to fragments including a scene involving violent use of a plastic bag. Even the striking nature of the film, in capturing distinct visuals, does suffer from the sense of the film not fully connecting. The film, neither quite documentary nor fiction, does fascinating but also frustrates at the same time.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contemplative

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None