DIRECTOR’S NOTES
In the heart of Armugan
When presenting a film, it is common that the first question to be asked is: “Where did the idea to make this film come from?” Answering this question implies referring to a set of concerns that are collected in my filmography and that cover questions related to the concept of “life”.
On previous occasions, I have tried to ap-proach this question from an eminently political perspective and it has not been until now that I have dared to consider an existential approach.
Exploring death as part of life constitutes the central idea of Armugan.
I have tried to embody a story capable of supporting the development of this idea, choosing a character inscribed in a close cultural reality that is also representative of a lost symbol in the narration of extinct traditions.
Armugan is a fictional character. He stands, however, as an icon of a tradition present across many ancient Mediterranean civili-zations, a figure whose function is to nobly accompany one in the transition between life and death.
The ancient communal wisdom that kept the activity of these “end-of-life doulas” alive challenges the tendency of today’s societies to hold the fragility of life and its transitory nature as far as possible from our daily troubles. However, the false re-course of denying the idea of life in its au-thentic contingent dimension constantly collides with the reality of bodies exposed to the implacable stalking of decadence, disease and death.
Today more than ever we are collectively urged not to delay the bioethical debate on how we deserve to live our inevitable relationship with death.
This film endeavours to invite that univer-sal and collective reflection with its em-phasis on beauty and tradition, nature and value of acceptance, conscience and free-dom of belief. It aims to do so by pointing uncomfortably to that place that we prefer to ignore, alluding to a truth can never be hidden behind a false promise of eternity.
Armugan is a visual poem about the fi-nal journey that does not always arrive at the expected moment, nor under a logic that allows it to be viewed as a “natural” process. For this reason, nature and spirit have been merged in a story of few words, loaded with gestures and relationships between conscious beings and beasts. We have produced symbols and metaphors instead of closed discourses; life germi-nated behind glass fed by human breath, inert rocks marked by unequivocal signs of a past, using the invisible territory that surrounds what we call “life”, to speak of death. This secret dialogue is where Ar-mugan’s heart beats, where its essence blooms.
Often, those of us who work chasing dreams, trying to catch mysterious and sensitive essences, wake up unexpected-ly in territories where fiction is confused with reality and vice versa. Events of or-dinary life contain cryptic messages that spill over the lines of the script. In this case, my father’s death shook what must have been yet another allegory. Without warn-ing, I found myself face to face with the reality of what I was plotting with mere words. Masked shadows altering what un-til then I called “my life”. Nothing seemed real because of the deep sense of interim into which my perception of everyday life had plunged, the relationships with the rest of my family, confronting the abyss beyond. Absolutely everything threatened to resignify itself in an immediate and bru-tal way, with no time or possibility to stop that devastating emotional force.
Despite its ruthless synchronicity, nothing that happened at that event could be re-turned to fiction. My film had to be faith-ful to that contention with which I set out to create it. It had to maintain the level of detail and silence where I could allow myself to speculate, before feeling in its own body the insolvable emptiness of a father’s death.
That is why I decided to place the film in an environment where I could talk about death, as part of life.
BIOETHICS IN CINEMATOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION
For several decades, hiding death has had to do with promoting a state of perma-nent optimism, appropriate to the atmos-phere of consumption and confidence that sustains the economic and capitalist logic.
Nature, however, always ends up impos-ing itself. A microscopic virus can expose the entire narrative built to make us for-get the fragility of bodies and the transi-ence of existence.
It is very revealing to see how historical-ly the bioethical debate around dignified death has been exposed in fiction. From “Who’s life is it anyway” based on the theatrical text by Brian Clark, to the more recent “Sea Inside” 2004 by Alejandro Amenabar or “Chronick” 2015 by Michael Franco, the debate is typically centred around groups whose will to die is under-standable for their condition. Personally, I consider this reduction doubly dangerous and have tried to stay away from it. On the one hand, in my career I have worked with groups affected by serious ailments and very severe physical limitations, who, however, claim their full access to life. At the other extreme, in recent years we have seen cases such as that of Noa Po-thoven, a physically healthy, but morally devastated, young woman who claims the right to assisted suicide.
Certainly the bioethical debate around dignified death cannot be reduced to a group whose death may be considered “logical”, “understandable” or even “de-sirable”. We know that the shadow of eu-genics hovers over these considerations and we must therefore broach the issue boldly and broadly. That is what I have tried to suggest in the script of “Armu-gan”, consciously delving into territories that are difficult and uncomfortable to navigate instead of violating the poetics of a narrative that could easily take refuge in what is considered reasonable.
Despite this, “Armugan” does not pursue a one-way truth. The silent confrontation between “Armugan” and “Anchel” shows different ways of contemplating life, ei-ther as a cycle in permanent transforma-tion, or a reality inscribed in the temporal-ity of a body and a personal identity.
Indeed, there is a dimension that tran-scends the limits of science in this debate and it is precisely this territory that the character of Armugan defends against Anchel’s materialist position. For Armu-gan, the job of an end-of-life doula crys-tallizes “in that instant in which love con-quers death”, while for Anchel “death is the cure for life”, (for a life condemned, I would add). The tension between these two positions is what projects and gives meaning to this film.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
A film that talks about life must be kept alive during its writing, its production and its editing. It must be sensitive and atten-tive to the unforeseen, permeable to the possibilities that nature can bring, open to the contest of animals and elements; to be alive from the moment of creation, to not be subjected to the rigors of the industry to develop a product, but to the delicate creation of a piece, perhaps imperfect, but extraordinary due to its uniqueness.
This was one of the greatest challenges for an artisan committed to a creation that seeks to capture the beauty of a moment in the daily life of those who live observing the cycles of nature.
A small, young, and committed team made it possible to maintain a balance between the application of a methodology close to the contemplative documentary with the production of fiction.
It should be mentioned that the hospital-ity and identification with the artistic and conceptual proposal of the film, thanks to the inhabitants of the Sobrarbe region, promoted the integration of our fiction in the territory and made possible the intan-gibles that should appear in this type of proposal.
Jo Sol
