Gaucho Gaucho

Gaucho Gaucho is a celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls who live beyond the boundaries of the modern world.

The filmmakers leave the gaucho community the same way they arrived, a tracking shot that turns the camera into a train that stopped briefly in a place we otherwise wouldn’t know existed, each viewer taking a custom souvenir. For some a lesson in courage and tenacity or curiosity about how this culture came to be; for others, it may be simply the snapshot from a trip they won’t regret taking.

What results is an affecting tone poem which ruminates on the passage of time and the passing of traditions from one generation to the next.

The real stars are the magnificent black and white images shot by Dweck and Kershaw. The co-directors’ eye for composition allows them to find visual magic and an arresting sense of drama in every frame.

All this cutting from one perfectly framed shot to the next, never remaining inside a scene long enough so that the hopes and dreams of a flesh-and-blood being might emerge, felt rather like treading in a vacuum; and left this viewer longing to know more about these resilient gauchos.

Some of these vignettes are more arresting than others; all are pleasurable in the patchwork impression they form of a lively and eccentric way of life. Anthropological excavation isn’t the objective here; Dweck and Kershaw are more than happy to buy into the community’s self-mythologizing, to absorb the hand-me-down stories and macho iconography that keep the romance of the gaucho alive.

Serves as little more than an exercise in striking photography mixed with a series of vignettes that’s as slice of life as one’s likely to find.