Afternoons of Solitude

The film offers no explicit commentary or context, but instead allows the images to speak for themselves.

In its graceful intertwining of meditation and obscenity, Afternoons of Solitude gives an ancient, controversial tradition the chance to shock and awe without hype or favor. It’s inhumane, it’s human and it’s a hell of a film.

In the interest of reservation: this isn’t Serra’s most intellectually interesting film, making it less fulfilling than his others, though it achieves the most directness of intention and rhetorical clarity of his work so far, continuing from Pacifiction in displaying how naturally his method and interests fit depicting the modern world

Deeply caught up in decoding this tradition, perhaps Serra is too beholden to it. If only this admittedly riveting examination of dark human compulsions had found a way to also articulate the perspectives of the animals for whom the arena is a lethal experience.

The film’s gaze is arguably as mocking as it is dazzled — with the macho posturing and hero-worship of Roca Rey a tacit source of comedy — while Serra, living up to his reputation for challenging arthouse fare, doesn’t flinch in his presentation of animal abuse and suffering.

Its immersive intensity makes it essential viewing for Serra followers, and for anyone interested in documentary’s ability to record, and make us think about, the extremes of the real world.

In the absence of any overt commentary, the film’s more open-ended choices in editing and music take on added significance.