I am not specifically a fan of science fiction but occasionally you find a sci-fi work – like this brilliant but largely ignored Mexican film – that pushes all the right buttons. The premise is simple – an unexplained incident that is market by an explosion in Mexico City and that changes lived reality – but it is extraordinary how the story is developed to encompass a wide range of themes.
And it does so with a minimum of props and zero special effects. This is a low-budget gem that alternately uses heightened drama and a zany form of humour; both are necessary to make the finale work, so you are prepared for the punchline when it arrives but it might take days before you finally come to understand the denouement.
Like such classics as ‘King Lear’ (1606), ‘The Incident’ critiques the entirety of existence and links such things as responsibility, individual fulfillment, ennui, carnal appetite versus creativity, the means of production, desire, destiny, mortality, legacy, youth, old age, and the notion of personal responsibility. It even looks at the nature of reality itself, and because it questions the usefulness of certain types of behaviour it also asks us to think about mental health.
Which Shakespeare’s play, of course, also does. Unlike ‘Lear’, though, ‘The Incident’ avoids politics almost entirely, unless you consider manners to be political. Which many, with some justification, do. What I wanted to mean by using the word “politics” is civil life. There is little of this in the movie because all of the action takes place in circumscribed spaces with only a few individuals. Mirroring the dynamics of social media, civility in the film is concentrated in an intimate sphere comprising interpersonal relations.
The label “sci-fi” is doubly apt because the film seems to posit the existence of an alternate dimension but, seen another way, some parts of the film suggest that the future depends on free will. Inside the film: paradox upon paradox. The story is almost impossible to summarise and hinges on a fact that, to reveal to people who had not seen the movie, would spoil it.
I learned about it in a tweet that referred to another Spanish-language production – ‘The Platform’ (‘El hoyo’ in Spanish) a film directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and released in 2019 which is also accessible on Netflix – which in March garnered a good deal of attention on social media. The tweet I saw just had the name of the 2019 film with images for two earlier films, and I looked them up on the Netflix website. Only ‘The Incident’ resulted in a match, so I flagged it to watch. I was enraptured by Ezban’s production and hope more will follow.
And it does so with a minimum of props and zero special effects. This is a low-budget gem that alternately uses heightened drama and a zany form of humour; both are necessary to make the finale work, so you are prepared for the punchline when it arrives but it might take days before you finally come to understand the denouement.
Like such classics as ‘King Lear’ (1606), ‘The Incident’ critiques the entirety of existence and links such things as responsibility, individual fulfillment, ennui, carnal appetite versus creativity, the means of production, desire, destiny, mortality, legacy, youth, old age, and the notion of personal responsibility. It even looks at the nature of reality itself, and because it questions the usefulness of certain types of behaviour it also asks us to think about mental health.
Which Shakespeare’s play, of course, also does. Unlike ‘Lear’, though, ‘The Incident’ avoids politics almost entirely, unless you consider manners to be political. Which many, with some justification, do. What I wanted to mean by using the word “politics” is civil life. There is little of this in the movie because all of the action takes place in circumscribed spaces with only a few individuals. Mirroring the dynamics of social media, civility in the film is concentrated in an intimate sphere comprising interpersonal relations.
The label “sci-fi” is doubly apt because the film seems to posit the existence of an alternate dimension but, seen another way, some parts of the film suggest that the future depends on free will. Inside the film: paradox upon paradox. The story is almost impossible to summarise and hinges on a fact that, to reveal to people who had not seen the movie, would spoil it.
I learned about it in a tweet that referred to another Spanish-language production – ‘The Platform’ (‘El hoyo’ in Spanish) a film directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and released in 2019 which is also accessible on Netflix – which in March garnered a good deal of attention on social media. The tweet I saw just had the name of the 2019 film with images for two earlier films, and I looked them up on the Netflix website. Only ‘The Incident’ resulted in a match, so I flagged it to watch. I was enraptured by Ezban’s production and hope more will follow.
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