User reviews

Tiempo real was all shot in one take. It made the Guiness Book of Records. Now, in my opinion any work of art that applies for the Guiness Book of Records is questionable. Without doubt it is a logistically fairly impressive effort to shoot an entire movie in one take, but so is delivering a paper round on a bike without brakes. What I'm trying to say is that this movie is little more than a circus trick and as a movie itself quite poor. There is no real need for improv acting in a movie, that is the great thing about the medium. In the same way, there was no need to do all of it in one take, if stopping to do it in more takes would have improved the imagery of the movie. Now the movie is neither visually attractive nor well acted. The actors repeat themselves, are clearly lost at some points and all of it looks like a few buddies had a fun afternoon with a video camera.

On the other hand, this is truly the most challenging formal experiment carried out in recent years, at least as far as what commercially distributed Mexican cinema is concerned. It's considered, according to the Guiness' Book of Records, the first the one-take full-length, narrative film ever. There are Mexican filmmakers who enjoy more credit than Prada, such as frequent collaborators Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. They apply narrative models as old as parallel storytelling, their most characteristic technique. It dates as far back as D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance," and they use it much in the same fashion. It also has been recently resorted to in American blockbusters such as "Pulp Fiction," and the Mexican "Midaq Alley", which are previous to their work. Their stories usually revolve around a circumstance, regardless of the sort, that links the fates of otherwise distant characters. Iñarritu/Arriaga's movies are also at a constant risk of falling into the same biased point of view which Griffith was known to have. Their characters and stories strongly depend on preconceptions of what a place and its inhabitants are. Their stories, according to what commercial models prescribe, strongly depend on villains, victims and heroes. Thus, given their "realistic" approach to film-making, the peoples and places they represent are necessarily going to be outlined and displayed in a partial focus. In their movies, foreigners from developed countries or higher social classes seem to be favored with the roles of heroes and victims. Meanwhile, people from third-world countries, especially México, are always portrayed as unscrupulous villains. On one hand, it's ironic that they represent people from their own country in such a degrading way. On the other, their movies, as most that compete in international festivals representing México, usually take place in this country's Federal District, where the political and corporative powers concentrate, showcasing only the local customs and talent. Worst of all, Iñárritu has followed the same narrative approach in all of his movies. This and his recurring themes suggest that his so-called "style" is nothing more than a formula.

Let it be said as a parentheses that it's strange how the Mexican media used to refer to "Amores Perros" (Love's a Bitch, 2000) as Iñárritu's first full-length movie. By then he had already made "Detrás Del Dinero" (After the Money, 1996), a TV film that runs close to sixty minutes. This duration would almost fit it in the category of a feature-film. It's not even listed on film databases at all, even though it was made for Televisa, one of the most powerful telecommunications companies in México. When "Amores Perros" was first released, audiences thought that Iñárritu was a groundbreaking, "independent" first-time filmmaker, when he was not, since he had worked previously for the established industry. He used the same parallel storytelling on this "obscure" film as with the rest of his movies.

This is not to say that "Real Time" doesn't suffer from some of the most common clichés in Mexican cinema. For instance, the overuse of foul Mexican slang and its guitar-driven score are all too similar to the way Iñárritu applies them in what's arguably considered his feature length debut. Maybe Prada intentionally incorporated such elements, given the success at the box offices of "Amores Perros", to appeal to the same audiences. Nevertheless, as opposed to "Amores Perros", his story takes place outside of México City. Maybe given the minuscule budget of his film, he uses local, non good-looking professional actors. We don't get to see the familiar, pretty faces from the established industry, who usually base their work activity in México City also. He also breaks with the recent tendency in this country to use non-professional actors, used with shameful results in such films as "Batalla en el Cielo" (Battle in Heaven, 2005, Cannes official selection for Mexico last year, believe it or not). But most of all, "Real Time" benefits from a story which illuminates the human condition rather than making biased judgments on reality, especially within a certain context. In other words, "Real Time" could well be remade anywhere without having to make references to specific time, space, ethnicity, language, race or compromising consistency.

There's no other movie in Mexican cinema which, at the script level, plays so much with what audiences expect from the characters. At the technical level, neither there is another film that achieves so much control over the development of the story without having to resort to editing, a fundamental element of cinema's language. Prada achieves this through carefully staging the elements on the scene and the camera movements, which took him more than a few long and exhaustive rehearsals. Not only he masterfully narrates a story but in the making of this film (and the film itself) he also gives us a valuable lesson on the worthlessness of money.

"Tiempo Real" (Real Time) was made in 2002 by Mexican filmmaker Fabrizio Prada, son of Bolivian writer Renato Prada Oropeza, who currently lives and works in México and helped his son script this movie. The story unfolds in a single shot of digital camera, moving through different locations in the city of Jalapa, Veracruz, and portraying several events. These events are triggered when the employee of a valuable transportation service and his accomplices decide to take off with the money he was assigned to deliver that day. From that point on, those who took part in the heist start dying as each one of them wants to keep the whole loot for his/herself.

This is not the first time someone attempts to shoot a feature film on a single take. "The Russian Ark," made a couple of years earlier, follows the same procedure. Nevertheless, the purposes to which each filmmaker applied this technique differ substantially. The makers of "The Russian Ark" attempt to present the history of Russia from a panoramic angle, in which the events come together as part of a single picture. Prada employs such method to present the dramatic elements of narrative film-making without having to use editing for the story to flow naturally, depicting each character's point of view by the same token. "The Russian Ark" would be best compared with a painting, substituting dialog and individual characters for a collective entity, the people of Russia. Music and the art department set the mood and tone for each passage. Prada's premise closely follows the same model as Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," which in turn bears essential similarities with such movies as Mario Bava's "Chain Reaction" (1970) and "Rabid Dogs" (1974), for example. In these films all family, sentimental or fraternity bonds among the characters are over weighed by ambition, which leads to the use of each other for their individual goal of attaining wealth.

Prada's seems to invert the patterns and settings of Tarantino's story on purpose. "Reservoir Dogs" takes place in a single location for the most part, while Prada moves around the city as much as he can. The spectator identifies in Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) and Mr. Orange (Tim Roth) the characters with the highest stakes arisen after the "revelation," traditionally prescribed in drama. In Prada's film the characters that would have had the most dramatic weight are the ones eliminated first, leading to constant surprise as each one of the killers makes his/her move. Their motivations are not revealed until then. With Tarantino, we discover who the protagonists are little by little, while with Prada each character is given just enough time to present himself/herself, briefly outline his motivations, and kill or die in descending order. They die according to whoever the viewer thinks is the most relevant. In its attempt to present the development of a story in the fashion which the title suggests, it turns away from referencing the past, which in Tarantino's movie, for example, was constantly glanced at through flashbacks, somewhat telling the story in reverse order. Prada sees in referencing the past the main obstacle to present a story in the time frame in which it would naturally take place. If he had made such references for the sake of character development, he would have had to edit and defeat the main purpose of his experiment. Given the number of characters and their distinct motivations, the action moves along at a vertiginous pace.

This is where "Real Time's" main weakness may be. It's difficult to think that so many characters would do so much in such a brief period of time. They not only betray and kill each other while they move through nine or so different locations. They also drink together, have sex, family arguments, receive the visit of religious ministers, etc… One would think is highly improbable that so much action could take place in so little time. Thus, in avoiding the past, Prada accelerates the flow of the story, compromising credibility. Apart from this, the group's behavior pattern becomes obvious after a while. As each member is eliminated, it's only logical not to thrust anyone, and maybe more plausible to end the story sooner than when it actually does. To some viewers, so much action would require some sort of background for better digestion, and this may have meant to go back in time through editing.

It's a very courageous film with a lot of risk for an opera prima. The story its a personal point of view of human values, and how the thieves become victims of their own ambition. It is told in locations according to the reality of the Mexican life, its a nude portrait of a reality full of violence, ambition maybe produced by a high contrast of social classes. As an opera prima, takes a big risk, in planning the shooting in one take, that limits more the director. The actors, nevertheless they are great, are unknown actors,that makes the risk bigger according to screen the movie in the big theaters chains. A promising future for a young director from the cuban film school of San Antonio de los Baños.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Three awards were bestowed upon Mexican cinema at the week-long First International Non-Budget Film Festival which took place in the town of Gibara in eastern Cuba.

At the closing ceremony Friday night, the jury granted the special award for 'Best Feature Film, Fiction' to Tiempo Real (Real Time) by Mexican filmmaker Fabrizio Prada. Its 86 minutes are filmed with a single digital camera in a continual sequence. This achievement earned him a spot in this year's Guinness Book of World Records.

The plot revolves around a gang of thieves who, dressed in private security guard uniforms, rob a warehouse in Mexico. The two kingpins, instigated by the wife of one of them, plan, each in their own interest, to keep the loot, if ever they should survive.

Furthermore, Prada's work came in first place with a special mention from the International Federation of Cinematic Press (FIPRESCI) who emphasized the ability to construct 'a story that is complex in its action, locations, and characters, with a clever handling of time and an exact planning of camera use.'