The Myopia of Colonialism: Lucrecia Martel’s Zama

• In Event: The Sounds and Images of Colonial Indignity: About Lucrecia Martel's "Zama"

Abstract

Zama provides a startling portrayal of the conceits of empire and the paradoxes it breeds, carefully eschewing genre-driven formulas and relying on fantasy and imagination, sometimes to an outrageous degree, to re-envision the colonial past. Through its use of cinematography, mise-en-scène, and casting, Martel’s films provides a radical attempt to write history from below. While Zama is present is almost every scene of the film, he is largely unaware of what’s happening around him—a shortsightedness that is symbolic of the deterioration of the colonial power in the late 18th century. Occupying the center of almost every frame, the male protagonist is literally displaced by extreme depth of field photography, which forces viewers to follow the action in the background, where women and indigenous characters crowd the frame. Throughout the film, black and indigenous servants and slaves look on in judgmental silence as white give orders, their quiet protest and revolt revealed my minute gestures; in the film’s final part, indigenous populations take control, a culmination of a revolt that long been simmering, while Zama literally falls out of history. Carefully avoiding a false universalism, or a paternalistic view on the natives, which would pretend to speak ‘on their behalf,’ Martel alters our perceptions to let different voices and representations emerge. As a result, Zama is an elaborate fantasy about a richness that is lost, reimagining a continent that no longer exists—fluid, undefined, incommensurable and immense.

Author

• Gerd Gemunden, Dartmouth College