The Aura

The Aura
by Fabi?n Bielinsky

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DVD details

Actor: Dolores Fonzi, Jorge D'El?a, Nahuel P?rez Biscayart, Pablo Cedr?n, Ricardo Dar?n
Director: Fabi?n Bielinsky
Brand: Aura
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 138 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Ifc

DVD Reviews of The Aura

DVD Review: Masterful and engaging
Summary: 5 Stars

It's sad Fabi?n Bielinsky died (young) after making this film because El Aura demonstrates clearly that its director has mastered his domain. There are a few puzzling moments in the script and its characters, but this isn't one of those "Don't go in that room!" thrillers, it's old-school/neo-noir; quietly intense and full of suspense.

Ricardo Dar?n's peculiarly charactered performance is executed with such subtlety and nuance that it's hard to believe he's acting. The sound design and original score are beautiful, and so perfect for the film, they seem to be growing out of it rather than being imposed upon it. There are times when the lack of any soundtrack is deafening. The droning tensions and lilting piano ennui disappear, punctuating the moments of action with a moribund silence.

Sometimes I complain when a film ends with such ambiguity it appears to be a cop-out. But not here. The ending will make you rethink the journey you were just on but it won't devalue its magnificence. This is one of those rare films where the ride is so engaging that its hard to imagine anything but disappointment merely because it does end.

"Aura" is what doctors use to describe the moment before falling into epileptic seizure. Ricardo Dar?n's character describes it as a moment of pure freedom. The inevitable is so clear that decisions are impossible, hence ... Freedom. Clarity.

DVD Review: What Might Have Been
Summary: 5 Stars

I wish we could have had a dozen films or more from director Fabian Bielinsky, but because he died of a heart attack in 2006 at only 46, we have only Nine Queens and The Aura. Ricardo Darin, a veteran Argentine actor, worked in both (so did several others in the cast, I think) and he is superb here as Espinosa, a reclusive, fairly unlikeable taxidermist who has long plotted in his mind the perfect heist. Circumstances give him the chance to make his plots real in the forests and open spaces of Patagonia. He is both drawn to and repelled by the opportunity. He also finds himself less perfect in the execution than in the fantasy. What results is a character study -- as my wife commented, you don't ever really like Espinosa, but you always want him to succeed -- and intricately paced and plotted heist movie. The sometimes beautiful and sometimes desolate setting, the camera work, the acting -- almost every character is trapped in some desperate personal situation -- and Bielinsky's command come together for a unnerving and riveting movie that feels much shorter than its running time of over two hours. Don't miss it.

DVD Review: Somewhat disappointing follow up to Nine Queens
Summary: 2 Stars

After Nine Queens, a good but perhaps somewhat overrated thriller involving con games related to some rare stamps, director Fabian Bielinski followed up with The Aura. The film involves an epileptic taxidermist (?), played by Ricardo Darin (a famous Argentine actor, who also starred in Nine Queens) who, by some improbable chances and coincidences, gets involved with a gang in a casino heist in the picturesque Patagonian Andes of Southern Argentina. The plot is not very believable: Bielinski's sources for his films are not real life, but genre films filtered through some heavy and dubious philosophizing. This is not bad in itself; directors like Fuller, Melville and John Woo made some fine films out of pulp material, but Bielinski, who died of a heart attack soon after Aura was released in Argentina, was unfortunately not on their league. His two films show him as a competent genre filmmaker, but neither of those rise up to what can be considered a great film, in my opinion.

DVD Review: Just Watch the Fuse Burn
Summary: 5 Stars

This is just flat out one of the smartest contemporary heist films I've seen -- Darin is completely believable and the editing is sublime. Really, how many times do you hear someone talk about a film's skillful editing? Don't get me wrong, it's subtle and takes meticiulous care in building, so don't expect anything like The French Connection, but if you're patient enough to watch the fuse burn then the fireworks will ignite in your head. (9/10)

DVD Review: Poor Non-amorphic presentation.
Summary: 1 Stars

I won't repeat what others have written about the movie or what you can read on imdb. I just wanted to warn people that the US dvd of this is terible. The movie is a widescreen movie presented in full frame format such that more than half your tv screen will be taken up by windowboxing. The image is so small that you can't read the credits & if you're hard of seeing you might want binoculars to read the subtitles, half of which cover the image and half in the windowboxing (with so much windowboxing, the least they could have done was to put all the subtitles in the black border.) This is inexcusable for a 2007 release & a good reason why you should own a multi-region player...to buy an import version that is anamorphic.

Description of The Aura

(Drama/Thriller) A shy taxidermist who secretly dreams of executing the perfect robbery stumbles upon an opportunity. Caught up in a world of complexities and frightening violence, his lack of experience puts him in real danger. Plus, he is an epileptic. Before each seizure he is visited by the "aura'' -- a paradoxical moment of confusion and enlightenment where the past and future seem to blend. Argentina's official submission, Best Foreign Language Film for the 2006 Academy Awards.

The Aura will go down in history as a great film with a tragic loss attached to it. This totally original and deeply involving thriller was the second and final feature film by Fabi?n Bielinsky, a gifted Argentinian writer-director whose debut feature, Nine Queens, earned global acclaim and introduced Bielinsky as a talent to watch. Sadly, Bielinsky died of a sudden heart attack in June 2006, at age 47, and we'll never know what other great films he might have made. The Aura stands as testament to Bielinsky's masterful skill, on full display in this riveting study of a sad and lonely taxidermist named Espinosa (played by Ricardo Dar?n, who was also in Nine Queens) who compensates for his disappointing life by imagining elaborate crimes that he's planned to perfection. When a hunting accident results in the death of a criminal mastermind who'd been planning a casino heist, the taxidermist (who possesses a photographic memory and suffers from occasional blackouts caused by epileptic seizures) assumes the dead man's role, improvising his way through the crime-plot with untrustworthy partners and the constant threat of danger.

The film's title refers to the semi-conscious fugue state that precedes the taxidermist's epileptic seizures, inducing a sense of disorientation and dread that Bielinsky uses to deepen the film's psychological impact. Dar?n's dour, worried expression is a fascinating focal point for his character's unpredictable journey into the heart of darkness, and The Aura's primary setting, in the thick forest of Patagonia, is a perfect complement to the film's ominous atmosphere and deliberately paced intrigue. As far-fetched as it may seem at times, the plot's heightened reality remains utterly convincing, and Bielinsky demonstrates an uncanny knack for escalating suspense in quietly intense situations. From start to finish, The Aura is clearly the work of a filmmaker with seemingly limitless potential, and we can only wonder about the excellent films Bielinsky would have made had he lived. Unfortunately, two slight DVD extras on The Aura give us no insight into Bielinsky's too-short career: the "making of" featurette is very brief and consists primarily of an interview with Ricardo Dar?n, and the behind-the-scenes musical montage is an equally short and perfunctory assembly of production video set to the moody, electronic tones of Lucio Godoy's subtly effective score. --Jeff Shannon

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