Jauja (2014) User Reviews

Lost in the desert...

[slabihoud · 7/10 · 6 November 2014]

If you dare to watch this film be sure not to expect much of a story, rather enjoy the surprising beauty of the Argentinian Pampa and the time the film gives you to look. I guess almost every shot lasts longer than 10 seconds and many run far longer and create a dreamlike atmosphere. At some point it reminded me of a still picture gallery. Not much talking is done either and the dialog is creating more fog then clearance. There is only a very thin storyline but most things remain incomprehensible.

Films like „Gerry" come to mind, or „The Shooting", "The Draughtsman's Contract" or even „Shutter Island". The best approach might be to absorb the images which are often really stunning and don't try to solve the riddle. It seems to be meant as an experience, not as a thesis on what went wrong in this or that person's life. The main character gets deeper and deeper into the desert while everything gets more surreal.

Although all this sounds rather weird and boring, the film has an inner suspense that doesn't let go. Viggo Mortensen plays a man who looses his dignity in the course of the events but he never appears ridiculous which is much to the credit of the actor.

Compelling and watchable

[pulpscifiardent · 7/10 · 12 May 2015]

Many films that try to do what Jauja did fall flat due to one simple flaw. Tedium. Many drone on and on till even the most patient film goer ends up bored and any deeper meaning of the film is lost to them.

Jauja is a slow paced, quiet, and visual film, but it never feels wearing. There's a sense of pace, a slow pace, but a pace and a rhythm that never makes it difficult to watch.

It is made up largely of long, beautiful shots, usually devoid of any music and containing only minimalist dialog. The whole affair has a sort of dreamlike feel. This movie is far less about characters and story and meaning than it is about tone and mood and aesthetics. If it's an aesthetic you enjoy than the film will engross you.

All that said I wasn't truly blown away by it. Nothing really ever shocked or grabbed or awed me. It was beautiful, it was enjoyable, but not really inspiriting on any higher level. It is in the end like a very nice dream, pleasant while you're in it, worth remembering after, but not really anything that carries with you long after waking.

Too slow, at times, and with an underwhelming ending.

[peefyn · 6/10 · 15 September 2015]

This movie is beautiful at times. In addition to being in 4:3 format, the colors are made to look like it was shot in the early decades of color movies. This goes excellent together with the "western"-setting. Both the scenery and the costumes worn by the actors, attract your attention, and rewards you for it. The 4:3 format makes me think of cheap western shows made for TV, filmed in studios with backdrops. This move is almost demonstratively not using backdrops, and it has actors moving back and forwards in the scenery, giving the movie a sense of depth (almost despite the aspect ratio).

So, it's good looking. Sadly, the story is not as interesting as the setting. In parts of the movie the story moves painfully slow. There are interesting portions of it, and the story does get going after a while. But in the end of the movie it takes a quick turn to the surreal, which could have been interesting, if it hadn't been ruined straight away by an underwhelming ending. I'm sure there is something to explore with the story, why it ends as it does. The obvious answer is hopefully not the correct one.

On a different note, I liked the acting and the actors in this movie. I understand Danish, and I thought it was great fun to see how it was used along the Spanish. The best scene is maybe the one where French is also spoken.

There's hardly any music in the movie at all, but the little there is is nice. I also liked the sound in this movie, at one point it made me squeam more than I have in a long time.

Subtle narrative

[babamine · 23 September 2016]

Spoilers alert! This is a movie about the subconscious mind and all the revelations that just a dream can have for one self. From what I understood the movie is about a girl, who misses his father, and connects with him in a dream. It is about father and daughter love. She is alone in an old castle that seems to be her house, and the paints and decoration in the house, somehow made her dream about a past era, where a father is looking for his girl. However, she is the girl in the dream, who experiences her love in the "corto" boy, her liberation, her friendship in the desired dog, and her old age in the old woman. I feel it is the intention of the director to represent another reality inside the mind, another state of consciousness that give us also a realization. I like the movie because it is a brave attend to explore another narrative, another reality. I dislike the fact that it lacks enough sentiment to trap you. The cinematography is stunning, and it is the tool that keeps you hook. But for me it is not enough to make you feel out of breath when the movie ends. No that is has to. But it is definitely memorable. ** Sorry if my English was not clear. Spanish is my mother tongue.

Fatherly Devotion

[sol- · 6/10 · 20 January 2016]

Nearly impossible to review without spoilers, the bulk of the narrative action occurs in the final half-hour of 'Jauja'. The first hour and a quarter is almost deceptively different from the final 30 minutes as it spins a rather simple tale of a soldier searching for his daughter in the wilderness after she elopes with one of his lieutenants in the middle of the night. Things change towards the end though as he discovers a cave inhabited by an elderly women who (through her unusual questions) we come to realise is his daughter, grown up. As he has not aged, it soon becomes apparent that he is a ghost - a restless spirit who kept wandering even after death until he finding his child. The final fifteen minutes are even stranger though, and whether one takes it as his dream of a life of richness for his daughter (for whom he said never really knew a real home) or something else - is entirely open to interpretation. Fascinating as all this might sound though, the film is never especially engaging with its twenty page script expanded to a film close to two hours in length. Some of the lethargic shots that bask in the natural vistas are pleasant enough, but why so long is spent merely watching lead actor Viggo Mortensen get dressed or watching his daughter sleep for minutes on end, is a mystery. Tension invariably dissipates with so little happening on screen, and powerful though the twist might be, it would have certainly been even more effective in an intense short film less half its length. If one has the patience though, it is admittedly a thought-provoking ride.

The voice of the desert

[birthdaynoodle · 9/10 · 4 January 2015]

I went to see director Lisandro Alonso's 'Jauja' especially because his earlier trilogy blew me away. 'La Libertad' (2001), 'Los Muertos' (2004) and 'Fantasma' (2006) each observe a solitary man – a survivor – roaming through the jungle wordlessly, like a wild animal. (The setting of 'Fantasma' is urban, but can also metaphorically be regarded as a jungle.) A decade later, I am still amazed by the power of those films and by how little they rely on plot, dialogue or props. Alonso's 2008 effort, 'Liverpool', is also minimalist and follows a similar theme, but tells a slightly more specific story.

'Jauja' is more elaborate than any of Alonso's previous work. As in 'Liverpool', there is something like a plot and very limited, but significant dialogue (in Spanish, Danish and French, in this case). A gorgeous, more sophisticated cinematography presents landscapes that bring to mind 19th Century oil paintings. This is a period film that involves realistic costumes and the kind of beautifully crafted tools used by explorers and the military in the 1800s. Also, 'Jauja' features a famous actor, Viggo Mortensen of 'The Lord of the Rings', who co-produced it and co-wrote the musical score. I think this was all a great way for Alonso to try something new and fresh, without giving up his very unique style and aesthetics.

Don't expect a linear, mainstream film or you may be disappointed. This is an art-house Western – a strange, slow-paced ride through the vast, open space of the Argentine Patagonia. It addresses the exhilarating sense of adventure, but also of violence and dread, that one might experience in the hinterland. The story reminds me of Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness', in that it depicts a struggle between the forces of "civilization" and the primitive, while also drawing a parallel between the wilderness of outdoor nature and our subconscious. (Alonso's film 'Los Muertos', which shows a man travelling along a river, may also have a link to Conrad's short novel.) The film's tempo, surreal situations and the use of places as a reference to states of mind are reminiscent of Tarkovsky's 'Stalker' or 'Solaris'.

We are explained that "Jauja" is a mythical land of abundance, something akin to paradise, whose search in the old days drove many to ruin. Dinesen (Mortensen) aims to establish order in a distant, foreign land, but keeps running into unruly behavior, left and right. It's as if the indomitable spirit of the desert possessed everyone around him and suggested to him – with its dreamy voice, sometimes forcefully, sometimes playfully – that his stubbornly controlling approach towards life is misguided, a lost cause. Perhaps more than in any other film he's made, the director achieves communicating something magical and ethereal, pointing to the deep, enigmatic wisdom that we each hold inside, but are afraid to listen to. The ending may imply that all these characters are, in fact, interconnected, showing different sides of the same stone (much like the "animus" and "anima" in Jungian psychology describe the male and female aspects in every person, for example).

Like Alonso's earlier trilogy, 'Jauja' poetically hints at the magnificence and mystery of human life in God's garden. Its images and sounds seem to come from far, far away, yet somehow feel eerily familiar and close.

A film any should see

[FuriosaLaPerra · 6/10 · 8 December 2014]

This film eases even the most savage man. It's a movie that must be seen with calm and patience due to its "low-revolutions" script. The world created for this story is more than great; in less than five minutes we feel immersed in this appeased lands of introspective and humidity, tons of humidity. I get my hands off the keyboard to applaud Lisandro Alonso and Fabian Casas for the sublime script. Choosing to play with such an abstract theme as it is the "dreaming/paralel world/spiritual trip" is admirable but challenging and they got through it in the most smooth way. Even though I really enjoyed Jauja I was left with a bittersweet taste, and this taste was brought by the format/size the movie was projected (4:3). I felt that my heart was ripped apart with each landscape maimed. My regards, Guido.

I'd Rather Watch Paint Dry

[larrys3 · 2/10 · 16 September 2015]

I'm all for complex dramas even if they're extremely slow paced. However, when it comes to nearly indecipherable plot elements and extremely slow pacing, I'd rather watch paint dry.

This is one of those movies that maybe a select few cinephiles and critics will tell us is poetry in motion. I guess if you're one of the unsophisticated like myself, you very well may not have the slightest clue what is taking place on screen. I know I didn't.

The fine actor Viggo Mortensen's talents are nearly completely wasted here in this totally confusing mess of a movie. I'm glad some have found it to their liking, but to me it was totally incoherent, as I kept waiting for some of it to make sense. Good luck with that!

Art movie for thinkers

[MovieGoerLover · 9/10 · 2 July 2015]

SPOILER ALERT: contains the key to understanding this movie; if you're still baffled by it read on!

To paraphrase the synopsis: A father and daughter journey from Denmark to an unknown desert that exists in a realm beyond the confines of civilization, and reality, and maybe it was all a dream...

The first clue sneaks up on you when the father, who's looking for his daughter in the Patagonian desert, meets a dog that seems to intently lead him to a cave where an old Danish woman lives against all odds and logic; their conversation hints that the woman is his lost daughter (now aged); he seems to feel awkward and leaves to continue his journey anyway. The ending just spells it all out - a young Danish girl wakes up in an empty Danish mansion. As she goes about taking care of her only real companion, the same dog we saw in the first part, it becomes clear that she dreamed the first part of the movie, while weaving elements of her life into that story: her dog, toy-soldier, estranged mother (the unseen murderous cross-dressing deserter?), semi-absent but caring father, and new-found sexuality. The more you look, the more you find... and the vistas are stunning

Challenging, not always successful (for me at least), but striking and memorable

[runamokprods · 7/10 · 21 August 2016]

After really loving the first Alonso film I saw, 'Los Muertos', I've struggled somewhat with his films I've seen since. For some reason Alonso's dedication to vaguely mythic and very enigmatic storytelling worked great for me in 'Los Muertos' -- creating a deeply disturbing portrait of a man who is leaving prison and returning to his family, perhaps to kill them (or perhaps not).

Jauja is also the familial story of a man on a mythic journey, in this case a Danish Captain in the army, stationed in an unspecific south or central American country that is in the midst of being colonized by the Spanish, with the Danish presence seeming to be one of both rivalry and co- operation. Viggo Mortensen (always excellent) plays the Captain, who has brought his daughter with him (why he would bring her to such a hostile, dangerous and male dominated environment is never made clear). When she runs off with a young soldier, Mortensen's character heads out to find her, and ends up traveling into his own soul, with the lines blurring between real and imagined, reality and surrealism.

The film looks great, and has a lot of striking and memorable moments. But after two viewings, I wasn't sure quite what it was saying, and – worse – I'm not entirely convinced it does either. That said, there are enough things I admire; the odd photography, the many strange and discomforting images and incidents that stick in my head like memories of a bad dream, that I'm willing to forgive it's frustrations. To a point.

A riddle wrapped in mystery enveloped by an enigma

[ayoreinf · 4/10 · 14 July 2015]

I don't mind riddles, I hate unfair ones, where you're not given the means to solve them. In Jauja, it's even worse, the viewers are being misled into thinking they're getting hints for the solution of the mystery - not true all we get is more riddles. I doubt Lisandro Alonso and his script writer, know themselves or even care about the solution of the mystery we're presented with. Antonioni did the same in L'avventura, but he was honest about it, he made it clear that the mystery wasn't the issue here. In Jauja we are led into believing that the mystery will unravel in a second or two only to find out this was never the intention of the film makers. Which made me feel like I was being regarded by them as simpleton and I don't like feeling so. Adding insult to injury, the film is shot superbly with a very high command over all the technical aspects, keeping the camera still as the on screen action is, namely moving it only on rare occasions and at a very slow pace. But having the technical knowhow, is not enough, I said it more than once and I'll say it again, if you don't know what your movie is about, don't waste our time with it, either wait until you do know, or simply don't make it.

Brave, challenging, absorbing.

[tedeames-900-40319 · 8/10 · 13 August 2015]

So refreshing to see a film that is not afraid to play around with the conventional idea of linear narrative. An intriguing blend of Tarkovsky, Apocalypse Now, and Bela Tar. It made me want to follow up this director's earlier films. The attention span of many film goers seems to be shrinking fast, judging by the criticisms of the lingering shots which Juaja features. Novels, music and art installations all play with time and space, and film can do the same, in the right hands, as here. Credit to Mortensen for lending his 'name' to a project like this, and for giving such a restrained performance. The real star of Juaja is the landscape, which silently conveys the truth that wild nature will always trump human activity.

Uninteresting story

[valadas · 6/10 · 19 October 2020]

Very simple story but uninteresting. The only merit of this movie are the images of a desert green landscape with huge rocks here and there. This is beautiful indeed. A Danish engineer travels to Patagonia in Argentina to take part in the anihillation of an Indian tribe by the Argentinian army. His 15 year old daughter travels with him and falls in love there with a young soldier and one night they run away off the camp where the army stays. This is the beginning of the movie. Almost all the rest shows her father going through the desert trying to find his daughter and meeting strange people including a widow that lives there alone. He never finds the girl and the movie enda by a sudden jump to a totally different scenery: a young girl (is she the engineer's daughter?) living in a mansion in what seems to be Denmark and going to walk outside after talking briefly to a man that is taking care of a few dogs. And this is the end that leaves us ignoring about the real end of the story.

utterly awful among the worst movies ever made avoid like the plague

[jchaudet · 1/10 · 11 January 2016]

Watching paint dry or even the grass grow would be a thousand times better than this

This movie is just ridiculous with no plot whatsoever. The scene consists of nothing more than fillers (watching a mountain for ten minutes or looking at an ocean) no dialogue worthy of the name

Beyond disgusting and beyond a waste of time

What is even worse than this movie is to have to come up with ten lines of text to review it. It is just atrocious

Daughter runs off with soldier- fine, not a bad beginning if a bit stale but really there is nothing to the story

And what the last part of the movie with the Girl and her dogs has to do with anything, is never ever explained

Just awful

Jauja (2014, Lisandro Alonso)

[Gloede_The_Saint · 9/10 · 21 December 2015]

Jauja is a poetical, mesmerizing and refreshingly quiet film. The camera is content not to move unless necessary. Occasionally it follows a character, but more often than people are allowed to walk out of frame. The sound-picture is primarily bird twitter in a distance. To my joy, we could observe the rider approaching, and it was not so impatient to cut to the arrival.

This can of course only work if the visuals are strong enough to allow your eyes to rest on the details. It was easy be consumed by the moving images at hand, to stare, to slow down yourself and appreciate the beauty - while at the same time a suspense is created. This is a skill only certain masters, such as Tarkovsky and Melville, have mastered, and Lisandro Alonso and his cinematographer Timo Salminen (known for his work with Kaurismaki) managed to bring the same, rare eye. I was astonished.

Interestingly, though possibly a character flaw of my own, my mind could stop placing the film in the context of the Brazilian New Wave. The way the characters moved within the frame, and the atmosphere captured would have fit just as perfectly 45 years ago. The occasional moments of absurd but subdued humor would also have fit. This is in no way criticism or calling the piece unoriginal, but rather making the claim that Jauja is timeless.

Viggo Mortenson is at the center of the piece, he too subdued - but with powerful eyes. My mind drifting as it does I could not help to imagine Klaus Kinski, though Mortenson brings a far more mellow feeling. In his own way he drives the film, perhaps even to the same degree as the frame. His eyes and very being might haunt you. I still conjure up his posture in my mind even as I am writing this.

Co-written by poet Fabian Casas there are clearly more ambition in the events themselves, which I will not thoroughly discuss. The calmness, even under terror, makes it ripe for contemplation - and I believe last 20-30 minutes and particularly the ending itself will leave you with a lot to think about.

Mixture of the genres, yet failed to decide what it really is. Pity, it had potential to be better!

[mila271 · 1/10 · 26 April 2020]

I was attracted to this movie, for Viggo Mortensen is a great actor,and I liked most of his movies. Also, some reviews were positive, and I thought why not give it a chance. Some critics claimed this is (also) western (''western''? although I did not see any real connection to western genre! To me, it is a mixture of genres, but above all, it is fantasy. Fantasy, probably, hidden into everything else other IMDB users and ''real'' critics described this movie. Yet, it is not really nor western, nor fantasy, nor drama. In some way, it is similar to ''Gerry'' (if I remember the title well) There's not really any plot in this movie. What is plot, is, perhaps, runaway daughter, but we dont see how she ends up and what really happened to her. Best guess, is, perhaps, the old idea, too many times used, about ''double universe'' and perhaps, some sort of ''time-travel''?? Yet, we dont really see any of that, it is just our wild guess. On the other side, costumes are very well done, alas, in vain, because costumes only can not contribute enough to save this movie. Movie-consumers, or DVD buyers, in general, will expect more. Viggo Mortensen is good actor, but what he can do here, with weak plot (almost non-exixtent) Strange format of 35 mm camera looks odd, but nice and movie is techincally very well done, with beautiful landscapes, but that is not enough. All on levels, I am not happy with this movie, it is too slow, there''s hardly any story, and we dont what happened to the main protagonists and everything is left opened and unfinished, which is quite disappointing.

Symbolic Western

[guisreis · 8/10 · 30 May 2023]

Gorgeous cinematography with bright green and blue tones in an unconventional aspect ratio, set in Argentine Patagonia, and having almost no music score (emphasizing natural noises, instead). All those traits make this Danish-Argentine-French-Mexican-German production to be unusual among Westerns. As a matter of fact, its script is even more deviant. While general plot - a mounted armed man searching his daughter in the wild - may be compared to John Ford's The Searchers, the pictoric or symbolic element puts it closer to films such as Jodorovsky's El Topo or Jarmusch's Dead Man, although having no comic relief and being more violent. The script makes no sense in linear narrative terms, and it is open to multiple interpretations as you may notice if you read a wide number of reviews. A Danish family in an Argentine military action in Patagonia directed to killing native people; a supposedly deserter with rumored bizarre habits; an officer who speaks French and thinks about the ball planned by his superiors; a harsh officer who hates Indians, has strong sexual appetite and wants the Danish girl; that teenager evades with a young soldier with no pevious sign that she intended something like that. Nothing fit very well and dialogues lead nowhere. It becomes more obvious when even more surrealistic situations eventualy happen. Indeed, nothing may be taken literally, but there is also no recipe for connnecting the pieces either. What does Viggo Mortensen's character deeply searches? What the desert in the end of the world means for him? What does his daughter represents? What her two latter appearances mean? What those officers and the native Americans symbolize? Many open questions to think about.

One of the worst movies ever

[carlo-mar-ll · 1/10 · 20 December 2014]

Being Argentine, I am a great admirer of its cinema.

As it was very praised by a local newspaper, and having Viggo Mortensen on the cast, we went to see it.

What a disappointment! Except for Vigo, its cast is amateurish (in the bad sense) when acting. Text is ridiculous and makes no sense. An absolutely bad and awful movie, none positive points at all.

It's very much (probably inspired) like some Glauber Rocha films, which at least made more sense sometimes. This one doesn't.

To top it all it was in 35mm film and framed in 1.33 screen, with rounded corners.

It's an experimental film, as should be announced as such. I will never trust that newspaper again (pagina12) when they recommend a movie.

I'm not sure why they go so many stars here either, because it certainly does not deserve them.

Compared to a recent Argentine success, "Relatos salvajes", which probably got high rates too, people should be careful how they judge films. You should walk out of this movie 10 minutes after it starts, which is what I should have done.

Don't be fooled by the recommendations. Go see it if still want to, but knowing you will see an experimental film made by director that seems to have just come out of a film school, even if he didn't.

Absolutely forgettable.

Definitely not for everyone

[Red_Identity · 23 March 2015]

This reminds me a lot of Gerry. This is a deep and very experimental film, not really a film that would be easy to recommend to casual audiences at all. It was surprising to see viggo mortensen in a role like this, and he does well, sort of. It's hard to really grasp how to judge him and the film around him. What I will say is that, just on that aspect, the film just wasn't very intriguing and that's really the one failing that makes or breaks a film. I was bored, and I rarely like to use that as a criticism but it is in this case. I definitely don't recommend it, even if I feel like there are some nice scenes here and there and some great cinematography. It's a film I don't like but I don't hate because it's still something different.

Deserted

[michaelghijs · 8/10 · 16 December 2018]

The movie takes its time, but by filming the breathtaking Argentinian scenery and a man realising that his daughter is gone, it is worth it. The camera work is brilliant in making the desert look endless.

Unbelievably bad movie!

[bren-t-mgr · 1/10 · 21 March 2020]

This movie is a pure 109 minutes of torture! Do not watch it, you have been warned!

A masterpiece that compels you to think

[alenkabbrown · 9/10 · 12 April 2020]

Beautiful, that 's all I want to say about this movie. Viggo Mortensen composes his character in an excellent way. If you like Lisandro Alonso´s movies then this one is specially made for you.

The little Western that could

[franciscoardila · 5/10 · 9 September 2015]

This films begins with the right foot. They use an "old fashion" aspect ratio, a very small aperture and a colorful scene composition. Then during the first 90 minutes of the movie you have a rather interesting western shot in a very old fashion way, say a "the Artist" of westerns. Sadly after the 90 minute mark the movie decides it is an art film, and its all downhill from there on. This is one of those films that make your angry not because it was bad, but because it had so much potential and they screw it up by trying to be pretentious. Some people may say that the movie was supposed to be that way all along and that you are simply not getting it right. But you cant backtrack 90 minutes of movie by setting a different tone 10 minutes from the end. Well unless you are really skillful.

I get the feeling this was going to be a short film, as they over stretch most of the scenes. Maybe as a short film its premise would have worked better. But well, feature film, distribution, prestige, the incentives were all there.

On a final note despite having a good casting and somewhat interesting characters, Viggo Mortensen Spanish had this tick American accent that made you doubt his origin.

Too metaphorical!!!

[li0904426 · 4/10 · 17 September 2022]

The movie "Jauja" is technically perfect but don't try to find a linear or coherent plot. It seems the author and director Lisandro Alonso throw on the screen what goes on in his subconscious and only he himself knows the meaning of some scenes (or not!!). Sometimes they look like a loose collage of images and sounds. Alonso places the central character in a desolate and hostile Latin environment, completely different from his Danish ancestors. His daughter disappears and the quest to find her reflects his own struggle in life. The film is full of allusions and metaphor that is tiring and monotonous. The film has astounding photography. Not for everyone!