(Canada/Chile, 78 min.)
Dir. Carlo Guillermo Proto
El Huaso: 1. a Chilean countryman and skilled horseman from the Quechan work huakcha, meaning orphan, not belonging to a community, hence free.2. a man of wealth and nobility, a free horseman3. an unsophisticated country bumpkin
“The one certainty in life is death,” says Gustavo Proto
towards the end of El Huaso. “Taking
your life is a natural death.”
Gustavo, a Chilean-Canadian in his late 50s, has decided to end his life. He wants to die with dignity as he feels his memory slipping away and awaits the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s that he feels is inevitable. His father suffered from the disease and took his own life, and Gustavo believes his father’s choice offers the best way to avoid being a burden to his family.
Filmmaker Carlo Guillermo Proto puts his life before the
lens in El Huaso and the result is
disarmingly affective. This provocative, if depressing, film gives voice to
Gustavo’s struggle with his deteriorating state and it gives voice to Carlo and
the rest of the Proto as they struggle to accept their father’s desire to end
his life. The film intimately follows Gustavo from Canada to Chile as he puts
his affairs in order and leaves no business unattended and no good-bye unsaid.
He clearly has his fate in his own hands and wants to end his life on his own
terms.
El Huaso, which
derives its title from three characters defined in the opening title cards
cited above, lets the fatigued elder Proto make a genuine and passionate case
for the right to die. Suicide is the ultimate act of agency in the eyes of a
person with no actions or conceivable life left. Gustavo embodies all the
traits of the titular el huaso as he
finds himself rich with friends, yet unable to grasp the strength of his supports
and feels content to ride off alone into the sunset.
Gustavo’s family, on the other hand, approaches his desired
death much differently. They can’t accept his wishes when they believe that his
pain, memory slips, and discontent are all simply signs of age rather than symptoms
of any crippling disease that will reduce his quality of life. At what point,
then, life becomes a right or a choice seems debatable as the deterioration of
old age assumes different symptoms for those experiencing it and those
imagining it. The film gives an honest account of the struggles one experiences
with memory loss, and of the levels of self-esteem and despair that may go
along with it. Proto contrasts his father’s decline with the lives of some
family members back in Chile who are decades older than Gustavo and seem happy
despite the fact that their bodies and minds aren’t what they used to be. El Huaso shows that aging is to some
extent all in the mind, but it’s potentially a fragile state of mind that
nobody but the person experiencing it has any right to assume.
El Huaso
challenges the audience to avoid taking easy sides in the matter by introducing
another element to the mysterious and deeply complicated psyche of his father.
A pivotal argument between the members of the Proto family reveals that
Gustavo’s desire to commit suicide is a pre-existing condition to the
Alzheimer’s he believes lies on the horizon. This reveal changes the context of
Gustavo’s plight. On one hand, this information puts the severity of Gustavo’s
depression at the forefront of the film—not to mention his unwillingness to
recognize his depression when he seems so quick to diagnose other aspects of
his mental capacity—and the question of how much a person’s motive influences
one’s take on a legitimate human rights issue. Is Gustavo’s desire to end his
life any less valid if he considered it before he felt symptoms of Alzheimer’s?
Proto documents his family’s story with such frankness and
transparency that it’s almost impossible to imagine that he is both the creator
of the film and a subject of it. The film lays bare our perceptions of
depression and mental illness by confronting both the reality of living with
such conditions and the reality of living with someone with such conditions who
insists that he is beyond aid. El Huaso
is stark, stripped, and deeply personal, yet Proto zooms in on his family so
closely that he draws out universal themes and brings provocative topics out
into the open. Balancing the right to die and the right to live requires such
an open and honest conversation.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
El Huaso screens at the University of Ottawa Human Rights Film
Festival on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 4:00 pm at the Alumni Auditorium in the Jock
Turcot University Centre, 85 University St. at uOttawa.
Please note that
director Carlo Guillermo Proto and Dr. Simon Hatcher of the University of
Ottawa will be in attendance to lead a discussion following the screening.
Admission for all
film screenings is $10 for the general public and $5 for Full time students and
CFI members. Festival passes are also available for $40 (general) and $20
(students/CFI members).
Please visit www.cdp-hrc.uottawa.ca or www.cfi-icf.ca for more information.
