White on White – A Review

Chilean director Théo Court’s film, White on White (Espanol: Blanco en Blanco), is making its U.S. theatrical release on December 10 in New York and Los Angeles, and will be representing Chile at the upcoming Oscars.  This film takes place in the dawn of the twentieth century, where an artistic photographer named Pedro arrives to a dangerous and hostile territory, known as the “Land of Fire”, aka Tierra del Fuego, that is shared between Chile and Argentina in South America.  Pedro was assigned to immortalize the marriage of a powerful landowner with his photography, but turns into a violent uproar of genocide of indigenous people.

Pedro (Alfredo Castro) was invited by the powerful Mr. Porter (Lars Rudolph) to the land of Tierra del Fuego, to be the photographer for his upcoming wedding and his bride-to-be.  The twist reveals the bride-to-be is not even an adult, but merely a child. The work Pedro has done impressed Mr. Porter which led him to more jobs of photographing his land and homes.  What is unknown to Mr. Porter is that Pedro has become infatuated with the child himself.

From this point on, there are a lot of very controversial themes that would play out in this film.  Pedophilia is presumed to be one of the themes, which is unknown as to how much of an issue it was during their timeline in the twentieth century, especially being an indigenous remote area dominated by a powerful white male.  The second theme is genocide of indigenous inhabitants, where scenes show how helpless they are living in a cold shelter in a densely snowy area, with only fire and rags to keep themselves warm.  The dominance of Mr. Porter is shown forcing indigenous women to take off their clothing to put on lighter rags.

Pedro’s situation takes a turn for the worst when he was caught trying to undress the child for his photography, resulting in the message of betrayal sent back to Mr. Porter, leaving Pedro captive to Mr. Porter to repay his debt.  Mr. Porter would bring Pedro and his henchmen along his mission to kill indigenous people and to immortalize it with posed photographs of the whitewashed dominance.

What is intentionally left out in the film is the visual of the actual genocides of indigenous people.  It is left in the imagination of the audible gunshots and the actions of the white henchmen targeting the inhabitants, which is just about enough for the viewer to understand what was happening in the scene.  The camera would then cut to the dead bodies showing the outcome of the genocide.  There is not a lot of blood and mess in this film, but the sounds of shots and actions done by the men are more than enough to carry out the violence intentions.

The cinematography heavily focuses on wide shots of the land, which plays well to the role of Pedro as the photographer and his intent to capture some of those wide shots.  Seeing the remote areas in heavy snow to desert plains gives a nice overview of what life looked like in a remote area in the twentieth century.  There is more land and bushes than there are homes in Tierra del Fuego, with the exception of Mr. Porters home possessions.

Coloring of the scenes are given a dark and tinted shader throughout the film, providing an isolated grim feeling of what life may feel like if you were living in this part of town.  When photography is taking place, the scenes aspect ratio switches to a 4:3 ratio, and most of the photograph scenes show Mr. Porter and his henchmen posing with their guns and wooden flaming torches, asserting their power in owning the land over the indigenous people.

Audio design is minimalistic as you would typically listen to the white noise of the outdoors and inside of the house.  Where there is music, heavy minors of violins are played to emphasize the isolated sadness of the situations the viewers witnessing the horrific events Mr. Porter and his henchmen do throughout the film.

Pedro’s character also plays very well into the hands of Mr. Porter, where all he could do is take photos and take orders of what Mr. Porter wants him to do.  Because of this, Pedro is forced to see all the bad things Mr. Porter is doing to the indigenous people and knowing he could not do anything about it if he wants to get out of the remote area alive.

Overall, White on White strikes gold on the idea of using photography to immortalizing whitewashing events happening in the remote areas of Tierra del Fuego in the twentieth century. The artistic style of cinematography exemplifies the look and feel of isolated civilization meshed with historical events that came within it.