The Message
(El mensaje)

Road movies usually revolve around either an escapade or a quest. The Message is both. It’s about a trio – a middle-aged rogue, his gaudily attired wife, and a child with a supernatural gift – fleeing urban poverty for a life of fast bucks in the countryside. It’s also about the couple’s search for the “treasure” – that is, their starry-eyed ward’s untarnished innocence. Iván Fund’s monochrome feature shuns high-contrast blacks and whites and stays with grays – a telling approach about the Argentine filmmaker’s genteel depiction of how people engage and exploit each other in complex and sometimes contradictory ways. Call this Malick without the mythologising, or Koreeda without the caustic cynicism: The Message is ultimately the latest of a recent line of rural-set films about the struggle of the common people in Argentina, and proof of how conscientious cinema will persevere even in the face of a thousand (chainsaw-induced) cuts.
Clarence Tsui