Shakti: The End of an Era

Following on from Martin Rejtman’s decade-long hiatus from filmmaking that ended with the release of Two Shots Fired (2014) – a film which I explored last time out – it appears that the director has now firmly re-established his credentials in contemporary global cinema.

Currently working on his latest feature film, La Practica, which, for the first time, sees Rejtman move his filmmaking lens from Buenos Aires to Santiago in Chile, earlier in 2019, Rejtman released Shakti – a comedy short that may well be one of the best examples of the director’s unique style. With a running time of exactly 19 minutes and 28 seconds, to say Shakti is concise would be a huge understatement.

In Shakti, the viewer is treated to all the same elements of a Buenos Aires Rejtman movie that they have come to expect. The narrative explores the life of a young man named Federico – or Fede – who has fallen into a terrible depression following the death of his grandma and the loss of his girlfriend who has left him for another man.

The first scene is of Fede’s father and his grandma’s cook, Delia, having a conversation about what Delia will do now. Delia says she plans to take some time off to undergo surgery because Fede’s grandma always used to tell her, “why have surgery when you are so young”. This anecdote is then used to frame Rejtman’s story, because this idea of youth being the ultimate freedom and source of energy is not at all reflected in Fede’s story.

Fede is in a rut. He has trouble opening up to his therapist and the months seem to drift by without him meeting anyone new. At one point, his brother Ulises takes him to a club where he meets a girl called Shakti. Shakti is interested in Fede and the two end up smoking weed together at Fede’s flat.

The entire sequence of events, though, is imbued with Rejtman’s hilarious, deadpan sense of humour. Shakti asks if Fede has any vegetarian food and he delves into his fridge and finds some frozen potato knishes. Halfway through her first one, Fede explains, “My grandma made these. They’re all I have left of her. She died two months ago.” Shakti looks up and says “These are two months old? Sorry, but that’s disgusting” and leaves his flat.

Innovating Hallmarks

Stalled masculinity, social alienation, loneliness and mental illness are all recurring themes in Rejtman’s filmography and many of these themes rear their heads in Rapado and Dos Disparos. However, in Shakti, these themes are updated and altered with new meaning.

Framed within Fede losing his previous girlfriend and meeting Shakti, the film generally focuses on the impact, or lack thereof, of female energy on the mind of a young man. Afterall, in Hinduism, Shakti relates to the female principle of divine energy – an energy that Fede appears to be starving without.

But this energy doesn’t just extend to the character of Shakti alone, it quickly becomes apparent that it also extends to Delia and her own energy. At the end of the film, Fede discovers that the potato knishes that he held onto so dearly were actually made by Delia – a symbol of the energy often lingering behind the myths innate in our minds.

The End of an Era

While Rejtman’s techniques are certain not to change, his overarching motif of Buenos Aires is. Shakti, could easily be interpreted as a grand signoff to almost three decades of films set in Argentina’s capital and Rejtman’s cinematic stomping ground. Shakti is a love story in the most Rejtmanesque way possible – a love story about Fede and Shakti, Rejtman and storytelling and Rejtman and Buenos Aires.

In an interview, Rejtman went into detail about how a change of setting might change his storytelling lens:

“Every day in Buenos Aires I witness how places I’d love to include in my films are getting lost or destroyed. A house gets demolished and a modern condo gets built, a perfect looking café from the ’50s gets modernized and ruined, and so on. In Santiago it is possible that the same phenomenon happens, but those altered locations are new to me; I have no memories of these places. I’ll approach them innocently; they won’t possess the burden of when I look at Buenos Aires’s ‘improvements,’ and that undoubtedly will influence the way I’ll film and observe it.”

When asked about Shakti, Rejtman went on to say, “I wrote the script for Shakti as if it were a short story,” Rejtman reflected. “It’s kind of funny now that I think about it, because when I started writing short stories in the late ’80s, they were like little scripts: written in the third person, present tense, a lot of action, never going inside the characters’ minds. And now I’ve written a screenplay for a short film as if it were a short story; it looks as if somehow I came full circle.”

*

This is the final instalment of my Martin Rejtman retrospective. Click to see my commentary on Rapado and Two Shots Fired.