All Catalonia is our garden

The Spanish-Italian film Land of Alcarraz, directed by Carla Simon, has been released in Russian distribution, a film that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2022. The way the picture combined relevant and universal motifs was appreciated by Andrey Plakhov.

The film, shot in Catalan, is set entirely in a village where the large Sole family spend their summers tending a peach orchard, picking, selling and preserving fruit. This fertile plot of land has been theirs for decades by agreement with the family of their neighbors, the Piñol landowners, whom Sole saved from death during the civil war.

But the descendant of Pignols does not recognize a gentlemen’s agreement that is not sealed by an official contract. He intends to use the land now occupied by the garden as he sees fit, placing profitable solar panels on it and suggesting that Sole switch to the service of new technology, advanced and environmentally conscious. They are unlikely to go for it. The peach orchard is the only source of income for them, and the last harvest must be gathered at all costs. The matter is complicated by the fact that the cooperative of farmers, which includes Sole, conflicts, in turn, with buyers of fruit, which underestimate prices (which inevitably leads to the ruin of those who produce these fruits).

Although economic interest is at the heart of the conflict, the film is far from crude materialism; it poeticizes a spiritual sense of unity and a family tradition that is inherited. But still does not idealize it. A friendly family, devoted to its occupation, consists of representatives of different generations, inevitable contradictions and micro-conflicts arise between them. The patriarch of the Rogelio family and his sister still remember the times when the peasant world lived in terms of honor and reputation. His son and de facto head of the Kimet family faces the challenges of the era of globalization, reacting to them nervously, sometimes aggressively, breaking down on his wife and children. Teenagers Roger and Marion are the next generation, and they are followed by the younger Iris, whose eyes largely represent the events: she guesses the director of the film Carla Simone herself. The girl plays with her twin cousins, and these children’s games are shown as respectfully as the concerns and problems of adults: in the ensemble drama, each member of the family is given approximately equal attention. There is a place – however, on the periphery of the plot – for women’s reflection on the patriarchal family structure.

In this way, not so much has changed over the centuries, if not millennia. The heroes live in the eternal rhythm of hard, but noble rural labor, in constant contact with the flora and fauna. Old man Rogelio teaches his grandchildren how to properly pick peaches, apricots, and especially his favorite figs, which are tastier than anything in the world for him. A mobile, curious camera looks into doorways, penetrates through windows, wanders along long avenues of fruit trees, pushes green thickets. The film contains many shots of bucolic Mediterranean nature, caught at the peak of the summer heat, and details of rural life. Colorful local holidays are also shown: on one, Kimet wins the competition – the first of the men, without pausing, empties a vessel of wine to the bottom.

But landscapes typical for the region and signs of local ethnography do not cancel the universal meaning of the film. “Land of Alcarraz” is a kind of Catalan “Cherry Orchard”, and this is not the only high artistic parallel that turns out to be appropriate. Two films by Luchino Visconti come to mind at once – The Earth Shakes and The Leopard. In the first, we are talking about a revolt of peasant fishermen against dishonest buyers, and all the characters, as in Alcarraz Land, are played by non-professional performers. The Leopard shows the decline of the era of the aristocracy, giving way to a more energetic and young bourgeoisie. And although Catalan farmers bear little resemblance to Sicilian patricians, Carla Simon’s film fits into a series of films about the breaking of eras and traditions, about how painfully difficult, but necessary, to obey the course of history. It is also about the fact that human greed is as inescapable as civilizational progress is inexorable. A beautiful peach orchard is doomed to perish, the new generation of the family will already be torn off the ground, and only the elderly will keep its root devotion until their own death.