María’s Way by Anne Milne

Instead of proposing digital images, virtual worlds and new technologies, maybe the final frontier for cinema is reconnecting with its original purpose: recording everyday images. Before it was an art, before it was narrative and fictional, cinema was used as a small curiosity, a mechanical instrument interesting for registering movement or family moments.

María’s Way is so bold that nothing really happens in it. There are no inexpressive characters as in Lisandro Alonso’s films, but nothing exceptional disturbs the routine of María, an elderly Spanish woman who sell stamps in the middle of the “Camino the Santiago”, or Santiago’s Way, a famous pilgrimage route in the north of Spain. She wears the same clothes every day, looks at the same people and repeats the same phrases. “I’ll stop when I die”, she says, “and when I die, this will all stop too”.

The register of permanence is therefore the curious option chosen to portray the life of this very old lady. The aesthetic style is just as immobile: the same framing, the same light, the same periods of the day. María watches strangers passing, making fun of her, and then she’ll look at the camera, seeking the solidarity of the crew.

There wouldn’t be much more to say. The dog sleeps on the floor, the bird sings and María works. Some comic moments come from the old woman’s reactions, but nothing changes the structure. The film ends just as it began, with no transformation of the image or the subject. If it is true that cinema is a combination of fast photographs, this whole film looks like one single photo: familiar and simple to watch.

By Bruno Carmelo