Landmarks review – Lucrecia Martel’s beautiful account of an Indigenous murder case

Martel’s documentary about the shooting of Javier Chocobar is a mannered and dignified work, laden with post-colonial tension and the weight of institutions

The great doyenne of Argentine cinema, writer-director Lucrecia Martel (La Ciénaga, The Holy Girl, The Headless Woman), ventures into documentary to cover a murder trial, the issues of which spill out into very Martelian areas of concern: land and terrain as an active force in people’s lives, the tension between Indigenous people and the descendants of colonists, the legacy of weighty institutions (the law, the church) on everyday people.

Like Martel’s fictional features, Landmarks unfolds in stately fashion, and features the sort of editing that lingers on the face of a speaker holding forth, or follows a cleaner polishing furniture and a clerk distributing dainty cups of coffee to the authorities as the arguments drag on. Martel explores the more poetic side of drone technology, giving the viewer a very clear understanding of the lay of the land while also creating oneiric, disorienting sequences in which we see goats and people ambling along mountain paths upside down, creating what looks like abstract landscapes in tonal shades of green. It’s really quite beautiful – if sometimes a touch soporific.