Rodeo de Campo: An Andean Roundup, directed by Rodrigo Dominguez and José Lecaros, made its UK premiere at CSDF, exhibiting a raw, honest look into the lives of muleteers and cowboys in the high Andes.
Following the cowboys known as “The Arrieros of Paihuen & Alicahue”, the documentary captures what 170 years of history, camaraderie and community looks like.
The Chilean cowboys look just as you’d expect: shirts and jeans, straw hats, mantas de Huaso, riding spurs with sharp spikes and that calm demeanour when riding their horses.
The documentary follows the tradition in which they round up the cattle they’ve left to roam freely in the mountains over the summer. It is a community event that goes beyond just the roundup, and the documentary’s most profound aspect lies in the many things it leaves unsaid.
The documentary is shot in a fly-on-the-wall style. There is no narrator and an almost maddening silence throughout the documentary. Perhaps the high Andes are too distinct and absent of human interference for someone habituated to the constant stimulation modern times have normalised.
There is no direct introduction to the figures the documentary accompanies, though their names are present in the credits. The documentary just dumps you into the remote Andes, and you are forced to follow these mysterious figures through those unknown lands and figure out who they are.
The biggest flaw in the documentary is that, since there are no name labels or introductions, it becomes very difficult to discover or keep track of the cowboys’ names. Though it helps present them as a collective, their individual figures become less memorable.
The abundant silence and absence of narrative intervention throughout are quite interesting, though. It means that discretion over what is happening and what to think is left purely to those watching. This sparks a curiosity about every action the cowboys make.
Highly resonant, long-sustained “Huu!” and sharp “Ah!” sounds echo across the Andes with the cowboys. You can only presume they are commanding stubborn herds of livestock.
Dozens of dogs are also chasing around, barking, panting. You can feel the heat through the screen just seeing how tired they look and the refraction present in the long-distance shots taken across the mountains.
An area in which the documentary excelled was its cinematography. The patience involved in contrasting cows walking despairingly slowly down a slope and then capturing the cowboys galloping down that same slope at speed with a static shot was first-rate. Pairing that moment with silence and a brief emptiness worked fantastically.
The framing of those slope shots was simply stunning, and camerawork in those conditions must not have been the simplest feat. The filming throughout is generously raw and honest, capturing close falls while walking on tricky paths, as well as laughter and silence between the cowboys.
Through those paralysing shots of the Andes range, the film relays an astounding parallelism between the tiny, isolated figures of the muleteers and the massive, silent mountains of the Andes.
Thankfully for the non-Spanish speakers, they subtitle some sections of the cowboys’ dialogue. It’s quite funny, though, that in one shot you can hear a child swearing in the background and they do not caption it.
You hear one of the cowboys ask, “Why didn’t Carlitos come?”, a slight suggestion that perhaps the youth aren’t as engaged with these herding practices in the remote Andes.
“This one’s addicted to TikTok,” one cowboy laughs to another; even in the solitude and isolation of the Andes, the times haven’t left them behind. They are also prey to the changing times, and unfortunately, the documentary does reveal that their herding practice is fading after 170 years.
The cowboys’ restless days are represented through harsh transitions that cut from night to day, from silence to painfully annoying mooing, and from the deserted, warm summer to the pure-white, freezing winter.
The transitions, though representative, do feel awfully harsh and unexpected at moments – especially in terms of sound.
There are many questions to contemplate while watching the documentary:
‘Why are they packing the cows into a narrow enclosure?’
‘Why are they trying to rope the cows?’
‘Who are these people?’
Eventually, these questions are mostly answered, not with grand reveals or big moments, but just through the progression of observing their work.
Once through the mountains, the herd of cows finds itself in a small settlement where there are enclosures and more people.
Beers in hand, the cowboys have a great time doing their tasks. Their children are also in the settlement; the young boys seem to be practising their rope-throwing abilities and, at some points, even mimicking the older men’s shouts.
Thematically, these dynamics between the old and young strongly present the documentary’s concern about the potential loss of culture and heritage.
The documentary quite poetically reaches its peak when an old man is consoling a girl. It is a deeply honest conversation about why a young calf died. This marks one of the allusions to death and mortality in the documentary.
Towards the conclusion of the documentary, it cuts to a snow-covered Andes and focuses on graves with crosses and religious figurines.
The documentary’s end is bombarded with allusions to finality. It is perhaps an unfortunate way of suggesting how the herding practice these cowboys maintain may soon die out in a modern world.
Featured Image Credit: Central Scotland Documentary Festival / Rodeo de Campo: An Andean Roundup