Post Tenebras Lux (Light After Darkness), directed by Carlos Reygadas, is a stunning and deep film that defies traditional filmic techniques to present a story that is at once intimate, honest, commanding and mystifying.
Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) lives a fairly peaceful life in the Mexican countryside with his young family. Underneath, however, he struggles with inner turmoil. He battles addiction, anger and lust as his son and daughter learn about the wide world around them. At the same time, but in a different world, a glowing demon wanders a quiet house, brutal sexual acts occur in a dingy bathhouse and a football game among kids begins.
The fractured nature of this film may be confusing, but it is utterly engrossing. It is impossible to know whether the multiple worlds of Light After Darkness are connected or not, and in the end it hardly matters. The movie is summed up pretty well in one of Juan’s lines as he remembers his own childhood, “All I had to do was exist.” Without a traditional narrative structure, Light After Darkness is free to explore the human condition in its own beautiful way. Perhaps the film may not be as cohesive as some would like, but to experience it properly you have to let go of these comforts.
The film opens upon the adorable Rut (Rut Reygadas) playing in a muddy field as a storm approaches. Immediately you notice a strange warping of the camera lens. This experimental technique funnels us into the world on screen, multiplying and distorting objects around its edges This can be described as a sort of “toddler-eye-view”, showing us the beauty of the world as seen by Rut and her brother, as well as portraying the various existential crises of the characters. This, along with the magnificent colour grading and post-production editing, lend a dream like quality to Light After Darkness that is so intense I actually began questioning whether what I had seen earlier in the film had actually happened.
The film touches at the very heart of human experience and shows it in a brutally sincere way. A psychosexual bathhouse scene comes as a shock after the quiet, meditative opening. Light After Darkness is all about contrast – of light and dark, red and blue, loud and quiet – and balances every aspect with precision. This film shows that beneath our idyllic view of the world pulses a powerful current of human emotion and thought.
Light After Darkness is a bizarre yet beautiful film. It plants you in a dreamy comfort zone, rips it away from you and then puts you back. With some jaw dropping shots and convincingly natural, understated acting, Light After Darkness seems set to become a cult classic.
Reviewed by James Rudd
Rating out of 10: 6
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