The Aura received mostly positive reviews from critics upon its release, particularly for its screenplay and ambience. It won the Silver Condor for Best Film and was the Argentine entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards.[6]
Plot synopsis
In neo-noir fashion El aura narrates the hallucinating voyage of Espinosa, a quiet, cynical taxidermist, who suffers epilepsy attacks, and is obsessed with committing the perfect crime. He claims that the cops are too stupid to find out about it when it's well executed, and that the robbers are too stupid to execute it the right way; and that he could do it himself relying on his photographic memory and his strategic planning skills.
On his first ever hunting trip, in the calm of the Patagonian forest, Espinosa accidentally kills a man who turns out to be a real criminal, and he "inherits" his latest scheme: the heist of an armored truck carrying casino profits. Moved by morbid curiosity, and later by an inexorable flow of events, the taxidermist discovers the price it takes for his dream to come true, all the while and piece by piece completing a puzzle irremediably encircling him. And he does it while struggling with his greatest weakness: epilepsy. Before each seizure he is visited by the "aura": a paradoxical moment of confusion and enlightenment where the past and future seem to blend.
Writer and director Fabián Bielinsky had started writing the film in the '80s,[13] then-titled Un amigo del señor Dietrich (English: A Friend of Mr. Dietrich),[14] which closely followed genre conventions and had a clear redemption arc for the protagonist.[15] Bielinsky then took his original idea of "a guy wearing someone else's skin to satisfy his own desires" and took it in a different direction.[15] During the writing process, Bielinsky offered Darín to take care of the character while he developed the story. Bielinsky would then take Darín's thoughts and sensations on the character and reproduce them in the script.[16]
Bielinsky stated that The Aura was "a film almost reactive to Nine Queens". While Bielinsky shot Nine Queens in a way he would "disappear as director" and the writing would stand out, for The Aura he focused on other aspects of filmmaking such as "mood, lightning, or atmosphere".[15] The film is told entirely from the protagonist's point of view, being present in every single scene of the film.[15] Bielinsky had planned The Aura as part of a "conceptual trilogy", with each film focused on a different aspect of filmmaking. Nine Queens was the first installment, focused on mise-en-scène, The Aura was focused on point of view, and the third film would have been focused on editing.[17]
Production designer Mercedes Alfonsín was the first crew member to join the project. She had eight weeks of pre-production by herself and regularly gave Bielinsky notes on the script as he was writing it.[18] The casting process lasted six months. Ricardo Darín had already been cast as the protagonist, but the rest of the characters had no actors attached. According to casting director Eugenia Levin, the role of Montero, described as "a man in his sixties with respiratory issues and a mean face", was particularly difficult to cast. Uruguayan actor Walter Reyno was eventually chosen for the part.[19]
The Aura began filming in mid-October 2004, taking place primarily in Bariloche and Buenos Aires City.[20] In November 2004, shooting began at the Llao Llao Hotel in Bariloche, lasting around 40 days.[21] In December, scenes were shot at the La Plata Museum with Darín and Awada.[22] Filming concluded in late December 2004 in Buenos Aires.[23]
The effect of the aura was achieved using a circular camera dolly with a linear camera dolly over it. The camera would spin with Darín on it in front of the camera, while the camara would dolly in while zooming out, so that the background would move farther away.[24] The scenes where the protagonist experiences the aura consisted of alternating shots with symetric and asymetric framing in order to evoke a sense of unbalance and a "loss of volition".[17]
In order to give the film a feeling of "unreality, alienation, where everything might be happening in a slightly out-of-kilter dimension", the film was converted to a digital intermediate, where the effect was achieved, and then converted back to film.[25][26] The film's original cut had a runtime of three hours. The editing process took nine months.[17] According to Bielinsky, "nothing essential" was cut, they only shortened the scenes already present in order to get to its final runtime.[14]
Release
The film opened wide in Argentina on 15 September 2005.[27] It was theatrically released in Spain on 21 October 2005,[28] whereas it opened in French theaters on 29 March 2006.[29]
On its first day, The Aura was screened in 51 theaters and had 14,551 spectators.[39] In its opening weekend in Argentina, the film debuted at number one at the box office, with 123,137 spectators and grossing four times that of Blessed by Fire in second place.[39][40] It was second-highest opening weekend of the year in Argentina, after Papá se volvió loco.[41]The Aura remained in first place for its second weekend.[42] By its third weekend, the film had accumulated 357,681 spectators and dropped only 6% from the previous weekend.[43] By the end of January 2006, the film had over 620,000 viewers.[25] The film grossed US$1.8 million in total.[3]
Critical response
El aura garnered mostly positive reviews from film critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 48 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "The Aura is a highly original and cerebral thriller that maintains its suspense from start to finish."[44]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 78 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[45]
Critic A.O. Scott, who writes for The New York Times, liked the way director Fabián Bielinsky used the neo-noir style, writing, "Mr. Bielinsky made use of a familiar film noir vocabulary, but not for the usual young-filmmaker-in-a-hurry purpose of showing off his facility with genre tricks. Rather, his movies restore some of the clammy, anxious atmosphere that made the old noirs so powerful to begin with." He also mentions the early death of director Bielinsky. He said, "For his part, Mr. Bielinsky, in what would sadly be his last film, demonstrates a mastery of the form that is downright scary."[46]
Film critic Jonathan Holland, film critic for Variety magazine, liked the film and wrote, "An engrossing existential thriller from Fabien Bielinsky...Leisurely paced, studied, reticent and rural, The Aura is a quieter, richer and better-looking piece that handles its multiple manipulations with the maturity the earlier pic sometimes lacked...Featuring a career-best perf from Ricardo Darin, pic is a must-see in territories that warmed to Queens, while its superior production values could generate even bigger returns from international arthouse auds who enjoy their thrillers with a touch of distinction."[47]
Film critic David Wiegand thought that director Bielinsky tackled a bit too much in this film and wrote, "Bielinsky's latest film, The Aura, is in some ways more ambitious, which may be one of the reasons it doesn't work as well as it should...the careful camera work, beautifully dark cinematography and the quietly nuanced performance by Darín keep our attention, but in the end, the film's bigger challenge isn't its length, or its deliberate pace: It's that it's overly freighted with symbolism and meaning."[48]
^"El aura irá al Oscar" [The Aura heads to the Oscars]. La Prensa (in Spanish). 1 October 2005. Archived from the original on 16 December 2023. Retrieved 21 December 2023.
^Fevrier, Andrés (20 August 2015). "El éxito que nadie esperaba" [The success no one expected]. La Agenda Revista (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 11 July 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
^ abcCarrillo Penovi, Alejandro (15 September 2020). "Tres videos sobre el montaje de El aura" [Three videos on editing The Aura]. Argentine Society of Audiovisual Editors (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 29 December 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
^Roitman, Tomás (30 August 2007). "Entrevista a Mercedes Alfonsín" [Interview with Mercedes Alfonsín]. Centro de Investigación Cinematográfica (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 27 September 2023. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
^Montesoro, Julia (8 August 2004). "Cine argentino" [Argentine cinema]. La Nación (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
^"Darín filma en el Sur" [Darín shoots in the South]. El Día (in Spanish). 5 November 2004. Archived from the original on 5 December 2023. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
^"Cine argentino" [Argentine cinema]. La Nación (in Spanish). 12 March 2006. Archived from the original on 26 December 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
^ ab"El aura arrasó" [The Aura killed]. Página 12 (in Spanish). 20 September 2005. Archived from the original on 2 October 2009. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
^""El aura" arrancó con todo" ["The Aura" started strong]. Clarín (in Spanish). 17 September 2005. Archived from the original on 12 December 2023. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
^""Es muy gratificante"" ["It's very gratifying"]. Clarín (in Spanish). 21 December 2005. Archived from the original on 23 December 2023. Retrieved 23 December 2023.
