No reader of Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky can forget the alcoholic, spiteful 'Underground Man' from his searing Notes from the Underground. If he was to do what Filip Mosz (essayed by Jerzy Stuhr), the protagonist in Camera Buff by Krzysztof Kieślowski, did at the very last frame of the movie—turn the camera towards himself to get a sense of his own life—one might arrive at a documentary with the same sensibilities as I, Lucas.
Yo, Lucas (title in Spanish), by Colombian director Lucas Maldonaldo (44), was exhibited recently at the All Lights India International Film Festival (ALIIFF), as part of the Indywood Film Carnival 2017. It is a constructed documentary, probing into a life punctuated by excessive drinking. All his ex-girlfriends, save one, take turns to speak about him—while lying fully-clothed beside him on the bed. He had to resort to the opinion of others, because, as he put it, “it is about things I don't remember as I was drunk.”
The documentary was filmed when he was around 40; what urged him to do so? A friend of Lucas was leaving her apartment to him, as she was embarking on a long trip. To mark the occasion, she threw a big party. Lucas, of his own admission, invited quite a few shady characters that he hung out with, and both he and the host ended up being robbed. “I went into a severe depression, thinking that no one would ever trust me again”, conceded Lucas, who hails from a family of artists. He himself is a graduate of Film and Television School of the National University of Colombia and ESCAC in Barcelona in Film Directing, and took recourse to his favourite quote from Karl Marx’s The Capital: “This point is important for the study of the crisis”.
“I made this film to rescue myself, and also to show that alcohol is a big problem.” he iterated. Explaining the film he said, “It becomes a reconstruction of my life with my ex-girlfriends, my mother and my brother. More than just their confessions about me, it became a portrait about them as well.”
A scene from 'Lucas with his Lid Off'
He attended Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) groups, where he was told to “take control of his life, to try to understand that there's nothing worse than drinking”. Initially, the scriptless shoot, which went on for a year, starred only his mother and the girls in his life. When he began to edit it, he felt the need to bring in his brother and put in some simple animations. Sober during the year-long shoot, he suffered a heart-attack after it finished!
It so happened that all his ex-girlfriends were actresses, though that didn’t hamper the integrity of the documentary. However, his most serious partner, Maria Acosta, was unwilling to being filmed. Lucas had been in a live-in relation with Maria. She, by his own admission, knows him most intimately. Would that be a deficiency? “She said she was willing to do this as an exercise, but didn't want to appear in the movie.” clarified Lucas, further reasoning, “Actually it was good that there are a lot of things in life that cannot be put in art. Real life goes through the holes of art and then you can feel, though you cannot see.” Continuing, he said, “A lot of people, after seeing the movie, gave me a tight hug saying that they understood a lot of things about themselves or their drunkard brothers, relatives, friends and neighbours.”
His neighbours were the target audience. “I primarily made this movie for three of my friends in my neighbourhood in Bogota. There, it worked very well. It is a gossip movie in Bogota”, Lucas lets out a hearty laugh.
Surely your producer must be heaven-sent! “Absolutely, at the beginning I didn't know what I wanted. My Swiss producer, Ervin Goggel, gave me a total freedom, telling me not to think too much, to take it one step at a time.”
When asked about Marcel Proust and of course his Remembrance of Things Past, where the former spends his time putting his own life and exploits under the scanner, he smiles impishly. “It was actually Goggel who had asked me to read it while I was making the movie. I didn’t take anything from it though”. Incidentally, film buffs might even be reminded of touches of Ceylan’s Three Monkeys or even Pasolini’s Teorama on seeing this movie.
All said, why can’t you stick with a girl for long? Is it commitment-phobia? “Yes, for sure. I am very selfish. Life is very short. I need more. I am also self-destructive,” he says, underlining the scathing honesty that marks this film and his personality. True to the state of things, his Facebook status screams, “It’s complicated”!
