Aftermath: A Short Film by Nacho Cerda

Last Saturday-Sunday I was at the horror movie marathon. Apart from accomplishing the brave feat of watching one horror film after another for twenty four hours continuously, I also achieved something else. I found the answer to many questions -- questions such as which is most sickening film you have seen? most frightening? most horrifying? Or what was your most unpleasant experience in a movie theatre? The answer to all these questions is without doubt--the screening of the short film Aftermath by the Spanish filmmaker Nacho Cerda. And as anyone even mildly sane, who is lucky (or unlucky, depending on the perspective) enough to watch the movie will attest, this was an experience like no other.

The film begins as if it were some music video. We see a mutilated body of a dog with camera gradually receding so that we get to know that it is a dead dog only when the camera reaches a certain distance. We also get to know, through soms stylistic cross cutting that a woman has died in an accident (perhaps with the dog). Then we see one of the doctors handing over the locket with the cross, which belonged to the dead woman, to her grieving relatives. The next twenty minutes or so is set entirely in the autopsy room, in which we first see with clinical detail, how an autopsy is done. So far the film didn't do much for me, but there were occasional flashes of the eyes of the coroner and I knew that the worse was yet to come. And come it did. The coroner turns out to be evil psychopath who mutilates the dead body of the woman and does other unsayable things. It is not completely graphic but when it is suggested it becomes even more horrifying than when it is shown. After the gruelling ten minutes or so the film ends with a scene that packs such mighty wallop to the heart and the mind and to all the delicate human sensibilities that it left me paralyzed not just with horror but also a very deep sadness.

And did I foget to mention, when all of this is happening on screen, Mozart's famous Requiem plays in the background (I knew about it only later. Okay, I am an ignorant philistine). Finally, the most important question that anyone might ask: What was the point of the film and more importantly, was it a work of art? Although I thought differently when I finished the film, now I think the film did have a larger philosophical point and it indeed was a work of art. Actually the film is a part of a trilogy of films about death, the first and the last being The Awakening and Genesis respectively. And I guess if I had seen the other two I could have appreciated it more. But even then I found it very interesting, both thematically and stylistically. There is some innovative and very effective camera work, lighting and editing, specially in the begninning and the end of the film. And as far as the themes are concerned, it asks one simple question, if death is indeed the end why do we find the violation of a dead body repulsive? Why does it affect us so much when the dead body itself does not feel any pain? After all a dead body is just like any other perishable matter, right? No, wrong! And the film proves it. Death is not the end...it is definitely not the end. Now whether we should feel good about it, is a different question altogether!

If you are curious to know more, here is something and here is something more.