Carla Simón’s wonderful Alcarràs is set in Alcarràs, Catalonia- Spain, among a three-generation family of peach farmers whose future is uncertain. The movie is about this uncertainty. Years ago, the patriarch of the family, Rogelio (Josep Abad), made a deal with the owners of the land, the Pinyols, that it now belonged to his family. There was no written contract, only an agreement — a promise that Pinyol’s son, who now runs things, has no legal obligation to honor. Rogelio had no reason to doubt that the Pinyol family would keep its word.
As is so often the case in a story like this, there is history between these two families. Rogelio’s family long ago sheltered the landowners in wartime, when the Pinyols were targets precisely because they held land. Built into the agreement between these two families, we sense, was an understanding that something was owed — that honor was at stake in the agreement. When we meet Rogelio’s clan in Alcarràs, the violation is already underway. Pinyol’s son wants to build solar panels on the property — property which, so far as he is concerned, still belongs to his family. He wants Rogelio’s family to shift from peach farming to working with him to maintain this imminent solar farm. He wants, in effect, for their entire way of life to change — for them to modernize, and with them, the West Catalonian countryside that Simón’s movie carefully, thoroughly depicts.
Alcarràs is a movie about the future. It is not a thriller, but it hinges on just as urgent a central conflict: The basic question of what this family will choose and what will happen to the unit either way. The movie encourages us to perceive something of that future by diving fully into the present. This isn’t only because of the incumbent solar panels, but they matter too: We look on, right at the family’s side, as Pinyol’s workers begin constructing them in the distance, and as they grow more populous throughout the movie. We watch as Rogelio’s son Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), who runs the farm now, talks to other farmers about potential protests, worries himself sick over unfair market prices, works himself ragged, tightens his reins on the family as they enter what could be their last season of harvest. Holding everyone together becomes his second occupation. Farming as a family remains the first.
bye.
