Shoot first, ask questions later. It's a statement that has become clichAc in a long history of Hollywood thrillers, from Bogart's hard-boiled detectives to Craig's new Bond. In ""The Aura,"" however, the late FabiA¡n Bielinsky gives the formula a fascinating new twist, examining what happens when his character shoots first, and is left to fill in the blanks himself.
Playing an unnamed, epileptic taxidermist with a photographic memory, Ricardo DarA-n's protagonist occupies his free time plotting elaborate heists in his imagination. He candidly tells a friend—while waiting at the bank—that the only thing necessary to pull off the perfect crime is an acute attention to detail. Fortunately for him, he's got attention to spare.
With a life as static and unchanging as the animals he preserves, his security and his fantasy world are suddenly shaken up when he stumbles upon his victim's hidden shack after accidentally killing his guide on a hunting trip. There, photographs, financial records and a list of names reveal a plot to rob a local casino.
Memorizing the documents, he slips into the role of his victim, trying to convince the dead man's confederates that he's in on the con. As the lies build up, however, he is forced to constantly stay one step ahead of his collaborators in a crime in which a single slip-up will cost him his life.
Bielinsky is hardly a novice with the genre. His first film, 2000's ""Nueve Reinas"" was a wonderfully inventive yarn reminiscent of ""The Hustle,"" and went on to spawn a rather lackluster American remake, ""Criminal."" Like ""The Aura,"" ""Reinas"" was a heist thriller and starred DarA-n. The connections, however, end there.
""The Aura"" is not a thriller in the conventional sense. In its plodding 134-minute runtime, there is nary an explosion, car chase nor romantic subplot to be had. And, despite the promise of the casino, ""Ocean's Eleven"" this is not.
Rather, the film stands alongside existential thrillers like ""Fargo"" and ""A Simple Plan,"" blurring the lines between nature and human nature, depicting harsh characters amidst harsher landscapes, threatening to swallow their inhabitants whole—providing they don't kill each other first.
Shot beautifully by Checco Varese, Argentina's Patagonian forests take on a quietly menacing presence, while Lucio Godoy's subdued piano score only adds to the threat.
As if an externalization of DarA-n's haunted and introverted protagonist, the forests in the film are a place of death and decay, every unturned leaf hides another secret and oftentimes the most frightening thing lurking the woods is man himself.
Critics have hailed 2006 as ""The Year of the Hispanic Directors,"" with CuarA3n's ""Children of Men,"" IAA¡rritu's ""Babel,"" Del Toro's ""Pan's Labyrinth"" and AlmodA3var's ""Volver"" leading the Oscar race.
Unfortunately, amidst the awards season hullabaloo, ""The Aura"" has been all but overlooked, a sad, but perhaps fitting fate for a film whose director, at the age of 47, died of a heart attack this past June, cutting short a life and a career that might have otherwise made a lasting impression on the international film community.
When watching ""The Aura,"" one almost suspects Bielinsky knew what was to come; his characters' crimes are played out with an almost elegiac sadness among the watchful trees, as if to suggest that despite man's best laid plans, nature will triumph in the end.
