Gunnar Dinesen is a Danish engineer in the service of the army waging war against the indigenous population on the coast of Patagonia at the end of the 19th century. Dinesen wants to keep the external circumstances of his work away from him, but when his 15-year-old daughter runs off with a soldier, he has to turn himself in. He embarks on a quest that has everything from Joseph Conrad's “Heart of Darkness” to John Ford's The Searchers (1956), but takes a surprisingly different course.
All of the works by screenwriter and filmmaker Lisandro Alonso, born in Buenos Aires in 1975, accompany silent men on perilous journeys through the wilderness and rely on the mind-expanding power of close observation and slow movement to stage their journey, which is usually also one of self-discovery. Jauja (2014), Alonso's fifth feature-length film, is no exception, but with Viggo Mortensen - who co-produces, is responsible for the music and plays the lead role - it places a veritable star actor at the center of the normal-format images, whose rounded corners are reminiscent of early films and old photographs. Mortensen, however, makes his star persona fade and disappears into the pampas.
