Nocturna: The Collection — Nocturna: The Collection(DVD)

Here’s a double bill, or rather two complimentary films from the year 2021, on DVD; both directed and written by Spanish film-maker Gonzalo Calzada. It’s a somewhat spartan package, with just trailers for extras - and truth be told they’re not great - but you are getting two films, so…

Nocturna A: The Great Old Man’s Night is just shy of two hours, and presents one night in the life of the main character, Ulises, an elderly man. It’s going to be difficult to summarise the plot without ruining the film, so I’ll tread carefully. The film begins with some children in the past, playing hide and seek, then cuts to one of the children now nearing the end of his life: Ulises. He is apparently dreaming, and the film cuts to him in his apartment building where he then witnesses a man trying to force his way into a neighbour’s flat. After a conversation with the building superintendent, Ulises returns to his flat, and greets his wife, Dalia. They lead an isolated, anxious, paranoid life, somewhat trapped in the apartment and terrified that they will be put into a rest home by their son - with whom they have no contact - or the housing authorities. In the night they are awoken by banging and smashing from the apartment above them, followed by cries of distress, Ulises investigates and is shocked by a shadowy figure at their door; entering the kitchen he sees a brief flash of a body in the adjoining courtyard, before discovering that someone has interfered with their belongings and furniture, at which point there is a hammering on the front door, and despite’s Dalia’s protestations, Ulises checks the spy hole and sees a manic woman, who turns aggressive after Ulises doesn’t open up. The woman is wearing a nightgown with a pattern reminiscent of the body that Ulises saw earlier in the courtyard. The door is hammered again, but this time it’s the superintendent, who demands access to the apartment for himself and some firemen; there’s been a accident: Elena, who had taken portrait photographs of Ulises the week before, has fallen to her death from the flat above. The superintendent then phones Ulises’ and Dalia’s son, Carlos, to tell him about the incident; at which point Dalia begins to fret that he will turn up, discover that they can barely take care of themselves, and ship them off to a home. That’s as much as I can say without spoiling the film, and even then I feel like I’ve said too much; also, it possibly reads as convoluted, but the plot is really very simple, with its complexity deriving from the way that the films twists in and around itself. The remainder of the film charts Ulises’s night, and his strange, dreamlike, or rather nightmare-ish, encounters with other occupants of the building, and memories from his past.

On the plus side, it’s good to see a film dominated by older characters, both of whom are played well, and the film creates a good sense of claustrophobia, with the apartment becoming a container for events, and a character in itself. There are lots of shots through doors and windows. It’s a smart, clever film, clearly made on a low budget, and it negotiates this well, for the most part. However, I don’t feel the film does justice to its interesting themes. The beginning of the film is rather slow, and there’s obviously a secret being unravelled but without any real tension. There are many emotive scenes depicting dementia and degeneration, designed to be sentimental but often they’re not affecting, and sometimes make the film ponderous; the horror aspects of the film also clash with the more emotive elements for me, though the final scene does indeed hit. As for those horror elements, there are some jump scares which aren’t always potent, and some J-horror body movement work which is derivative and again isn’t great; there’s also a scene where Ulises re-encounters the burglar from before, and unfortunately it’s really quite bad in terms of effects and affect. Sonically, I feel the soundtrack is… not good. It’s ladled on, in terms of emotion, and has zero subtlety; it also never stops, overwhelming the film in places - there’s also ‘Eastern music’ upon the sight of two elephant figurines, and the less said about that the better. Whilst the film’s structure and turns - and I have to say that one of the big twists was very obviously telegraphed early on in the narrative - do require a longer duration to work, it does feel like a good short story drawn out to its detriment.

‘Side B’ of the collection is Nocturna B: Where Elephants Go to Die, and it’s the same but different. Essentially it retells the story of The Great Old Man’s Night, but from different angles. These angles are thematic and visual; thematic, in that the voices of Dalia, Elena, and the burglar are foregrounded, and visual in that the film is made up of scenes from The Great Old Man’s Night shot from different angles, or indeed scenes that don’t appear in the film. All of this is shot on Super 8 film, and then heavily processed and manipulated, with lots of scratches and distressing, and herky-jerky, jolting movements and stuttering loops of film. The film also recycles dialogue from its mother-film, and has some effective glitchy noises alongside its visual glitching; however, there are moments where the music again impedes the film: one of the climactic scenes is somewhat lessened by overly sentimental music. The narrative largely follows The Great Old Man’s Night but is split into numerous small sections, some of which are poetic monologues from the characters, fleshing out their backstories; it’s all very arthouse, and in that regard may or may not test your patience - it’s not a million miles away from Portabella’s Vampir-Cuadecuc. I was torn: some sections were quite effective, and certainly there were some affecting moments in the monologues; at best it had a woozy dream-like quality, and some notably eerie passages of empty and decaying house interiors. However, it’s darker moments, again, failed to hit home - though there was a concentrated section of frenzied cutting and looping which built up some force. On a final note that might sound superficial, it was nice to see the outside of the apartment building, which oddly added to the feel of the flats as cages.

I wasn’t blown away by Nocturna A and Nocturna B, and that’s probably evident in my review; however they both explore and question very interesting themes - I just don’t feel that the films themselves fulfil their potential as they might have. Both films examine ideas of death, dying, memory, and degeneration, respectively through the devices of ghosts and the camera; ghosts as looped memory, and the camera as a capturer of reality - a veil between the living and the dead. I feel like all the ideas and themes are there, and investigated solidly, but as films they just needed a little bit extra, a bit of tightening. I’d be intrigued to see if Nocturna B would work as a stand alone film; it would be cryptic certainly, but that might add to it. Thinking on both films, they contain a mass of interesting material and ideas, I just think the films could have been better vehicles for those ideas; however, I don't want to dismiss them, and I certainly they're worth a watch.