The Custodian (2006)

Too much of everything

That was an excellent one.

Absolutely brilliant

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Another Argentinian film that copies everything done before regarding shots and framing. Is like they all come from a film school that shows to the pupils films from the sixties and then, all of them copy here and there a shot. Amazing!. The real Argentinian cinema is Sorin and Agresti, the rest just plays with the ignorance of local film critics and snob festivals. Do this director has something original to offer?? The film is a bore, pretentious in simplicity. The pathetic thing shows that the director just wanted to show how much can copy but have nothing to say, absolutely nothing more than try to jump the leap and become a Fassbinder or any master sadly forgotten. Wake up people, take a look to the old masters and stop being amaze about things that already exist long long time ago.

Well, here again we have a variety of reactions to a movie. I found this film brilliant. Of course it was slow but that was a main point. But boring?..For me, not at all. I acknowledge that others have found it boring, but I most certainly did not. For me, it was a deep insight into our society and the shallowness of some of those in it, and into a man's mind as he is so ignored by it. No-one around him recognizes the humanity under his exterior...and certainly would not expect, understand (or care) about what lead him to implode. It is a brilliantly executed film...in my opinion. The superb acting in the film of the main actor reminds me of the acting of the Secret Policeman in the recent German film, The Lives of Others. ...So much is conveyed by few words and movement..but what emotion there is! I highly recommend both films to readers here.

I really tried to like this movie and as IMDb shows here, some others were more successful by doing so than me. Yes this movie has good ideas and yes it is a psychological study of a bodyguard ... you could say a documentary.And by being or feeling like a documentary it dries you up inside. In other words it gets boring. Why does it get boring? Because the work of a bodyguard is boring. I don't need 20 scenes that tell me, that the life of a bodyguard sucks ... 2 or 3 would've been enough! For me this movie was a waste of time and opportunities ... they could've either created some drama, but more importantly, they could've shortened the movie a lot! Better yet, they should have!

"Extraño" is the name of the film I saw last year with Julio Chávez in the starring role. Directed by Santiago Loza, it followed the life of a mysterious man and the woman he fell in love with. At eighty minutes or so, the picture seemed too pretentious and desperate to achieve its hour and twenty minutes of duration…With a heavy and repetitive piano as the soundtrack, "Extraño" has a lot of similarities with Rodrigo Moreno's "El Custodio".It's definitely a less pretentious project, but nevertheless risky. It's hard to get people and critics to like this type of contemplative cinema today, mostly in Argentina. Because contemplation is the best word that suits "El Custodio"; a very strong observation of a minister's (Osmar Nuñez) bodyguard's life. This man is Rubén, a character more silent than Chávez' "Extraño" and "Un oso rojo" together.If you remember well, Rubén was also the name of the actor's role in the latter movie, a fabulous tale by Adrián Caetano. However, this Rubén required more commitment from the genius, because the mesmerizing portrayal is focused on the patience and the body movement almost completely…Truly; his character barely speaks.There we arrive to the director's script, which shows the minister Chávez protects discussing politic issues that we don't even pay attention to; since Moreno's writing is more about the environment than about the situation. To be honest, nothing really deep happens in the movie; everything is routine as the main character's life, except for a visit to a country house, where the minister invites a French politician and asks Rubén (who draws) to make a portrait of him. "Very good", they tell him. "Thank you", he says, and he leaves.Moreno's direction is also about the environment. The man's picture has the biggest count of still shots I'll probably see this year. The repeated frames of Chávez drinking water and following the minister everywhere got him recognition in the festival of Berlin and a lot of nominations to Argentina's most important awards.What happened is that Moreno's father in-law became a minister, so he decided to join his bodyguards on their daily activities, filming them. "The bodyguards follow the minister; they don't know where he is going…They don't care", Moreno says in a short documentary about "El Custodio". "What happens inside their minds? What do they feel? This is what this movie is about".The ending is as mythic as the rest of the movie. Something to think about for a while and maybe watch the slow film one more time.