Horse Money and Full-Blown Ambiguity
Horse Money and Full-Blown Ambiguity
Max Courtright
Two weeks ago, WUD Film played a film that I programmed as part of our Starlight Cinema series called Horse Money, directed by Pedro Costa. Even among serious fans of arthouse and world cinema, Costa has always been a point of contention, with some critics lauding his shadow-drenched images and potent observations of modern life in Lisbon, Portugal, and others criticizing his films as too deliberately obtuse to be able to actually draw anything from. As a newcomer to Costa’s work who had read some of these praises and criticisms prior to watching the film, I felt like I knew what I was in for, or would at least have somewhat of a head start with understanding the film. Boy was I wrong.
Horse Money finds Costa re-teaming with Ventura, a Cape Verdean immigrant and the lead actor of his last feature film Colossal Youth in 2006. In both films, Ventura plays a lightly fictionalized version of himself also named Ventura who finds himself and other members of the same immigrant population consistently marginalized in the Lisbon neighborhood of Fontainhas. With his home being demolished in Colossal Youth, Ventura then appears in Horse Money in a mental institution of sorts, with meandering underground corridors and a seemingly impossible combination of modern and ancient architecture. The film beyond this point doesn’t have a strict plot to speak of, but more of a series of remembrances and dreams that Ventura has while battling what seems to be some form of dementia, as well as an ailment that makes his hands continually shake. His short venture outside of the hospital (i.e., escape) leads to the film’s liveliest and most plot-focused bit, with the residents of the surrounding neighborhood all forming a search committee and calling to him in the night. This is also the first instance of any music occurring on the soundtrack, but it’s cut short when a tank and some soldiers stop him and return him to the hospital.
Almost no camera movement occurs in this film, with Costa preferring to create shots that are still and usually shrouded in shadow, highlighting parts of Ventura’s face and the dank tunnels he always seems to be travelling through in this place. The conversations had by characters seem to not be true back-and-forths, but rather a series of non-sequiturs that the viewer has to draw connections between, forming conversations that are dictated thematically instead of logically.
The height of this strange writing style comes in a lengthy sequence set in an elevator making up most of the film’s third act. As Ventura enters the elevator, a soldier is standing inside covered in gold paint reminiscent of street performers who pretend to be statues. The Soldier acts in the same way, never moving his body or face at all while in the frame and only changing positions between shots. Different voices start to come from the Soldier that are directed at Ventura, recounting their own experiences with war and poverty and interrogating Ventura’s about his, albeit with a more hostile edge. Though the sequence is hard to make much sense of, it’s still a harrowing trip through the head of somebody with decades of turbulence behind them and seriously under-treated mental illness to grapple with right now. It’s clear that Costa wanted this sequence to be the fulcrum of the film, which makes its opaque nature so frustrating when evaluating the film as a whole.
Some people believe that films should be like Rorschach blots. However, this seems to be most commonly used as an argument when people want to justify their own misreading of a film. If you feel like Marley and Me is a complex allegory for post-war class struggles, the Rorschach test would reveal that you’re a pretentious mess. I think films in reality are more like jigsaw puzzles, where a singular goal (the filmmaker’s) may exist, but with pieces cut so that the end product is beautiful and purposeful regardless of how they’re put together. Even three pieces of a film’s hundred or more can be coalesced into something worthwhile, something that made the experience an enriching one.
The argument for seeing a film like Horse Money follows suit. I won’t pretend that I was able to unpack all of Pedro Costa’s ideas in a single viewing, nor do I think I would be able to upon one or two repeat viewings. But make no mistake, despite their dream-like lack of narrative structure and coded, poetic dialogue, Costa’s films are still very much docu-fiction hybrids. These are real people facing real strife in an area of the world that rarely if at all gets brought to American screens. When Horse Money delves into what seems like cinematic free-verse, that’s only to highlight the way these settings encroach on Ventura’s psyche and to emulate that for the viewer.
It should be obvious at this point that the film isn’t exactly pleasant viewing. But that’s not the point. Pedro Costa has created an educational two-fer, asking his audience to learn what cannot be explained with words about the citizens of Fontainhas using a cinematic language that has no translating dictionary. He’s asking viewers to work, and to be enriched by whatever they end up deciphering.