Pinpointing an artistic movement to a particular work or moment in time is difficult, since we’ve come to learn there’s nothing that can be considered truly original – as Roland Barthes said, “a text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”, which is the very foundation of postmodernism as a concept. Yet, if there is anyone we can consider to be the definitive voice of originality in the arts, it would be Samuel Beckett – he was crafting works that were unlike anything that had been seen before, and essentially laid the groundwork for generations of imitators and tributes by artists who look towards him as the model of creating bespoke works. He is widely considered the grandfather of postmodernism, and while it is Waiting for Godot that is most well-known, it has become a popular sentiment to say that his masterpiece is instead Endgame, his peculiar fable set in a ruined, barren world populated by characters existing on the very fringes of humanity, highlighting the futility of existence, a common theme present in so many of Beckett’s masterful works. This serves as the impetus for Pin de fartie (an intentional mangling of the play’s original title, Fin de partie, or “the end of the party”), in which El Pampero Cine – the Argentine artistic collective that has steadily grown in esteem as more of the global audience is given access to their work – stake a claim as heirs apparent to Beckett’s legacy, which entails taking his absurdist masterpiece based around postwar malaise, and building a story concurrent to a lot of his themes, following characters who are similarly immobilised – physically trapped and metaphorically blind to the realities of the world that surrounds them. As playful in form as it is challenging in theory, Pin de fartie is directed by Alejo Moguillansky, who shepherds several narrative strands, working closely with many of his cohorts to create a film that not only avoids cinematic convention but also actively resists any kind of categorisation or traditional description.

It should be noted that Pin de fartie is not an adaptation of Beckett’s work – it takes the fundamental themes present in Endgame and assimilates them into the Argentine artistic idiom, becoming a sprawling metaphysical character study that is both tragic and hilarious in equal measure, a playful exploration of existential despair and a fervent deconstruction of the literary form. In order to achieve this, Moguillansky and his collaborators craft a film that is comprised of roughly six key narrative strands, each one standing independently but having some thematic and conceptual connection that binds them together in interesting ways. These are not linear episodes, but rather intersecting fragments that don’t flow in any recognisable way, but instead jut out in crude, unconventional ways that resists any kind of hierarchical structure (none of these narratives dominate the others – they are all equally important and its through their existence in dialogue with one another that the film progresses), not so much influencing each other as they engage in a form of creative contamination. This aligns with a lot of Beckett’s own artistic curiosities, such as the concept of interruption and chaos as a purposeful artistic choice, as well as the virtue of allowing something to remain incomplete, which can be a powerful statement on how art is created and viewed. Uncertainty and confusion are not something to be avoided – in fact, the filmmakers find a lot of value in this approach, since Pin de fartie is essentially a film about endings, each narrative seemingly taking place towards the end of their individual stories. In the process, it makes quite a bold statement (or rather asks a specific question): can a film made entirely out of endings exist and have the same impact as those which follow a more conventional structure? The answer offered by the film is just as confusing, and we never get the kind of resolution that we may anticipate, which only enriches and complicates this unconventional film.

Pin de fartie is a film that aims to destabilise the audience, plunging us into a state of organic confusion, from which some of the more intriguing cinematic ideas can emerge. You can throw a dart at this film and find a theme that could be extensively discussed, with dozens of complex ideas making up the foundation of the story, or whatever assemblage of off-kilter moments can be described as a narrative. Each viewer is going to find a couple of ideas on which they will fixate, and almost in a choose-your-adventure model of storytelling, we trace our chosen motif, focusing on how that develops in conjunction with the others, which are not only less fascinating but may not grab one viewer in the same way as another. Amongst the most common themes in Pin de fartie that I found most intriguing were those of memory, repetition (particularly the positioning of life as an endless rehearsal in which opening night seems to be indefinitely postponed), the fickle boundary between performance and reality, literal and metaphorical blindness and the never-ending cycle of decay and renewal. Combining these ideas together seems impossible, but if we were to find a single narrative through-line, it would probably be that of the coexistence of purpose and futility, showing that repetition is inevitable, blindness to certain aspects of reality is likely and that only through embracing the inherent decay of certain aspects of our world can we find creative and vitality being generated, one of the many terrific but challenging paradoxes that constitute this film. It’s an intentional unstable film – existing somewhere between orchestrated and improvised (further intensified by the realisation that we can’t ever determine which parts of the story or segments of dialogue were scripted, and which were brought forward by the actors), and ultimately explores the art of adaptation as more than just engaging critically with an existing text, but also an ongoing act of finding an impossible ending, and how the nature of art is quite simply to consistently reinvent itself as a reflection of its creators and their perspective.

The commentary on the polyphonic nature of cinema is vital to understanding Pin de fartie, a film where we are told that the medium can contain many parallel realities at once through various techniques (montages, editing and juxtaposition being a few examples), through which adaptation transitions into multiplication. Moguillansky has a very distinct style, approaching these complex ideas in a manner that is both faithful and irreverent to the source material and the ideas brought forward by his collaborators. This is not a film that can be described as having a singular directorial vision, but rather is guided by a precise, sharp sense of skillful composition, where the director’s ability to capture rhythm and tone forms the foundation on which some peculiar but fascinating conversations are conducted, expanded through a sincere affection for cinematic language and form. Structurally, there are many moments of repetition and mirroring, some of which are more comedic, others outright devastating – and each one perfectly choreographed into what is appropriately described as an awkward dance of bodies set against some striking visual and conceptual backdrops, each one more complex than the last. It is a textured film in terms of both its visual and aural components – striking, discordant and consistently challenging in how it pushes the boundaries of the medium. The simplest of movements or gestures speak so much, and they’re usually accompanied by something more complex and daring that just enriches the experience. Many references to the history of cinema are present, and part of the joy of watching the film is finding these clues that situate Pin de fartie in a peculiar liminal space of both commenting on and honouring the cinematic form. The best way to describe El Pampero Cine is as a bricolage – the mixing of different concepts, approaches and visions, blending theatre, performance art, documentary and every conceivable genre. It’s not easy to pinpoint an exact aesthetic or conceptual foundation, but this is all part of the experience. The actors are as vital to the film’s vision as the writer and director, who work closely with them to create something truly extraordinary.

While they may not be entirely embraced outside the niche arthouse that is steadily growing but remains quite small for the time being, we can appreciate the efforts of El Pampero Cine to forge their own form of bespoke artistry unlike anything we have seen before, crafting films that are not the brainchild of one director and his vision, but rather the product of an active, ongoing artistic collaboration in which absolutely everyone on either side of the camera can be considered the author of the work – or perhaps even dismantling the idea of a work of art having an author as a whole. Yet another enormous undertaking in which they combine film theory, theatre, literature and several different historical contexts into sprawling, complex works. A good rule of thumb when engaging with anything that this collective creates is that if you are confused about what is happening on screen, you are watching the film correctly. Not only does Pin de fartie reward multiple viewings, it actively requires them – difficult to process after only one voyage into the lives of these characters, we are urged to seek it out several times, solely to be able to engage with the countless different layers that constitute them film. A shorter effort than their multi-hour-long excursions like La flor or Trenque Lauquen, this film is not any less radical, compressing the same ambitions into a tightly-wound but deeply moving meditation on performance, cinema and the unbearably wonderful and wonderfully unbearable burden of memory. There is not an ounce of closure to be found anywhere in Pin de fartie, a film that is purposefully obtuse and frustrating, refusing to give the viewer the satisfaction of a neat conclusion, and instead forcing us to find merit elsewhere. One such moment where we don’t expect to be moved is towards the end, during one of the landmark scenes of the film – one of the characters (a blind man) and his younger companion who may or may not be his daughter walk down the road, while a song written for the film titled “Viene Arrastrandose” accompanies them – its a scene that doesn’t make sense either in isolation or within the context of the film, but its nonetheless exceptionally compelling, being a clear summation of all the ideas that flow throughout the film. We are constantly in a state of adjusting to what we are seeing on screen, never certain about where we stand, but still being wholeheartedly entertained and fascinated in the process, turning this into a film that is intentionally unpolished and jagged, prioritising a kind of inventiveness that feels both immediate and timeless.