Crisis, Estrangement, and Critique in Lucrecia Martel's Salta Trilogy
doi.org/10.31641/ASMX1160
Matt Johnson
New Mexico Institute of Mining and TechnologyPublication
Abstract
Lucrecia Martel’s first three feature films, often referred to as the Salta Trilogy due to their shared setting in the Salta Province of northern Argentina, depict lives, and a world, in crisis. Her critical approach to cinema furthermore draws attention to processes of perceptual crisis that occur through the interplay between characters, viewers, and the cinematic image. This essay studies the relationship between crisis and critique in her films, proposing that it is grounded in one of the central narratives of modern art: the narrative of estrangement, whereby art is a process that enacts perceptual crises and renewals, allowing viewers to see, hear, and feel things differently. The overwhelming emphasis in existing scholarship lies in the ways that Martel’s films successfully estrange viewers’ perception, generating a critical consciousness of reality and laying the groundwork for transformative political action. This essay, in dialogue with texts by Jacques Rancière, Roger Ebert, Ana Amado, Rei Terada, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, argues that her Salta Trilogy also dramatizes, and reflects on, the crisis of estrangement itself in the art cinema of the turn of the twenty-first century. By situating Martel’s perception-oriented approach on the interior of the atmosphere of crisis that saturates her films, it demonstrates how they simultaneously rely on the narrative of estrangement, and consider its possible failure.
Keywords
Lucrecia Martel, Salta Trilogy, Crisis, Estrangement, Critique
