Obaba (2005)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Let's be realistic.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Having read other reviews people complain the movie is pointless, that it hints and sways this way and that but never delivers.I would say that this is exactly why I liked the movie. At the beginning it suggests something sinister is happening with the man on the highway with the lizard and the peculiar village woman with accusations of lizards eating brains. By the end of the movie none of our suspicions about the village are totally confirmed or denied. The bit in where she is asleep in the shed on camera and the lizard is on her shoulder she falls out of shot before it is confirmed that it did anything to her.In American films all our suspicions would be confirmed our curiosity would be satisfied by the end of the film, all the boxes ticked. American films only offer open ends to let you know they are making a sequel. This kind of obvious story telling is for teenagers.I found the story of Obaba refreshing, it played on our paranoid fantasies, and allowed us to turn Obaba into something it wasn't. It was in fact a very mature bit of film making, and it was nice to watch a film that wasn't completely predictable from beginning to end. It could have all too easily turned into a zombie film about villagers getting their brains eaten by telepathic super lizards, but then Hollywood has that covered.

Wow, I'm kind of shocked to read so many negative reviews of this movie. Maybe you had to see it in Spain as I did or maybe you have to enjoy movies that make you think. This is not your generic Hollywood-I-understand-everything-within-ten-minutes type of movie. This is a movie that one has to think about and contemplate after it is done and it might take several days to come across what you think the movie was actually trying to say. That, in my opinion, is a sign of a good movie. Obaba is not an actual place, it is a state of mind. Once people understand that, they can see the movie for what it is: an intelligent, beautiful, and mysterious view of northern Spain.

With great expectations I went to see this film, Spain's contribution to the Oscar-race this year. Part from being completely pointless, banal, pathetic, badly written, edited, acted and directed, the movie is too long. It fails in delivering the "message" it tries to give, fails in its storytelling, clumsy historical settings and above all in its rhythm. There are some so extreme misfires I haven't seen in a movie in a long time (the story of Lucas whose dead sister lives in his head, the divine revelations, all that lizard nonsense). The Spanish-speaking audience around me was yawning and rapidly losing patience, and some of the commentaries I overheard was whether the members of the Spanish Academy had taken drugs before choosing the film for the Oscar contest.

I found Obaba as the Montxo's best film. Atxaga's work is also visible. The way the director shows the misery of the rural life and the beauty and attraction of the rural environment is magnificent. I've seen almost all the Armendariz's films and I think Obaba is the (final?) good result of a "not so good" filmography. The camera man's work is very good, in the "filming scenes" specially. The best artist is Pilar Lopez Ayala - the teacher- which makes me believe in "the teacher" much more than the other artists. The worst Juan Diego Botto which, I found, doesn't have many registrations in his work as an actor. I've seen it not only in that film.... a pity...) A very international film... let's see in the Oscar.... A universal Basque film.