Bush (The)

I think of ‘The Bush’ as a film that moves between three genres: drama, fantasy and
horror. I like the fusion of genres, but not as a cinephile game of references but as a
natural breathing process within the film. In this fluid movement of tones and
atmospheres lies its identity.
This film sheds a light on the scope and limits of the communication between parents
and children. It is a plea for disagreement. There is no final reconciliation, no such
moment in which the fog of our prejudices clears and we fully understand each other, in
a transparent and lucid way, without any type of interference. The perfect
communication, what an entelechy! If we accept this as valid, we must ask ourselves, is
it possible to inhabit a bond even in dissent and mutual misunderstanding?
Just as no one is born a father, no one is born a son. Both roles are built over time to
the extent of each one’s tools and possibilities. Some do it better; some do it worse.

Some do it right away, others take a little longer. In ‘The Bush’ we see two people
trying, as much as they can and with what they have at hand, on this roles of how-to-be-
a-father and how-to-be-a-son, in a constant tension between wanting to fulfil those
roles and at the same time escaping them. Paradoxically, it is precisely this unsolvable
tension which allows for a space and a possible encounter.
What has always fascinated me to this day about the mythologies of northeastern
Argentina, which I grew up with, is that they do not require any explanation. Mythical
creatures have no origin and their acts don’t follow any purpose. Things just happen
and that’s it. Why should we project the logic of our rational world to the supernatural
one? Even more so, can we draw such a clear border between both worlds? Or is what
we call the supernatural nothing more than an infinite network of phenomena as
natural as wind or rain, which we simply cannot access yet?
Perhaps what the bush claims for itself is no different from what it already has and
what it already is. The borders between the human, the animal, the vegetable and the
mineral, between the earth and the claw that steps on it, between the river and the eye
that beholds it may just be another fiction. A story we tell to calm ourselves down.