Serpentarius (2019) - full transcript

I was born in Africa but
left to Europe in my teens.

My mother stayed behind.

Every year I cross the 6000 miles
that separate us to see her.

One day she told me she wanted to
adopt a bird with a 150 year life span

But she would only do that if I promised
to take care of it when she died.

SERPENTARIUS

My mother used to talk about
a distant kingdom, with a hot climate,

horizons to lose sight of, giant spiders
and fruits that were never discovered.

When the rain comes, the earth
perfumes the air of an impossible clay.

There are trees that have no name.

The water is so crystal clear that
during wartime you can't use submarines.



And when the sky is angry,
it seems that it will light up in flames.

Her eyes were lost on the wall of the
room she was cradling me in

as if she were looking at the ocean.

"I must go back," she would think out loud.

I would give her my hand:

"Go."

And as if she were obeying, she left me
where she thought would be my place

and disappeared in another continent

among the mountains where she
felt at home.

She would write on my birthday:

short notes of survival and
personal fulfillment.

Not even when she saw the end come,
did she change her mind.

I never saw her again.

[SERPENTARIUS]
1. the constellation, Ophiuchus; the 13th zodiac sign;



2. "he who carries the serpent"

Before you come, wait for the dust to settle.

Wait until you to see
the sun rising again.

Look for me among the ashes,
or for whatever is left.

Do not pass through where there is
still fire or embers.

Do not be sorry for what you see,
or for what you can not find.

Try to find out with your own eyes
all that my words have hidden.

Understand me first, judge me later,

and don't go away before the wound
of your breast is closed.

It's important that you be quick.

There is almost nothing that the wind,
in a matter of days,

does not cover with sand.

I am waiting for you.

Mother.

In the future, we shall live like skyscrappers.

Action heroes in a future world.

There will be no more angles, only curves

and history will give way to subjectivity,
like dinosaurs gave way to ice.

Women will always be women, but the
difference will be meaningless.

And sex, survivor of all threats,

will thrill only the brain,
which is where it will endure.

We'll amuse ourselves by dancing in front of
looking glasses

adorned with flaxen lamps.

Older people will remember the brightness,

but the designation "sun" will be re-attributed
to an anti-uranium appliance

available for homes and day-care centers.

By general agreement,
we will live much longer.

Unbalanced and weightless,
beyond our own moon,

we will float into the mist of space

that will, once and for all,
be understandable and safe.

But even the sky is not that simple.

The blue comes from the warm halo
that surrounds the cumulus.

It's hard to explain.

The sun does not bother,
except for what it reveals,

and darkness...
no one likes to close their eyes for long.

Some think that seeing others sleep
is romantic and sentimental,

but that is how the dead look.

From time past, what is there to say?

We only know how it is reflected in us.

Where they stopped they
left cross-shaped pebbles

like someone who pisses in a circle
to say, "This is mine."

And they stopped many times.

Surely the boats were full of that shit.

They would drop the seeds on the coast,

and the Empire would thrive
inland, down the coast

until it was 50 times bigger.

But what really fucked their
lives was this cape.

They would get here and the
clash of the oceans

the underwater currents and
the aggressive winds

caused the caravels to roam around
and nobody would cross.

The cinnamon and the crab
each time farther away.

The whiners called it "Cape of Storms"

the more cynical, "Cape of Good Hope"

And as if all hope was good, they
dropped pebbles here too.

Out the caravels came white-skined men

white as the skin of the gods.

It was said that the Gods had arrived

in huge wooden birds with white wings

that emerged from the bottom of the sea.

"Poor things, they haven't realized
that the earth is round!" said the Gods.

And while they were seen as Gods...

they took from the
natives their brothers,

their cousins, their daughters...

to distant continents,
never to return.

This is a side of the coin.

The other is that there really was
someone in the world

capable of exchanging their child
for a string of beads.

This was a possible thing.

But, what to do?

How to deal with the
nefarious power of beauty?

How to resist the
gloss of printed fabric?

And as for the Gods...

how to resist this endless horizon?

Let's go through it again.

Did you see him or not?

I've seen the white man!

He rose from the deep water,
in a white winged chicken with a wooden chest.

- That's all.
- I don't believe a word of it.

You are an imbecile!

- What do you mean he rose?

- He did not rise.

- He appeared from the curve
because the Earth is round!

- That's pretty much your opinion.

- To me he rose
from the deep dark waters.

I saw him by the moor. He ate two lambs
and spit fire that was cold.

He eats like it means something!

I saw the future in the sour milk.

He will colonize and exploit us
for 500 years. I saw it.

- I'm not lying.
- He couldn't do such a thing.

- You lie all the time.

Get new milk, shake it and look.

Hey, didn't you see something too?

Where?

- You mean the tiny little white man?
- Didn't you say you saw him?

I didn't see him per se.

But I noticed a lot of banana peel
by the waterfall.

- Everybody knows white men love bananas.
- Ah!

Hey, this milk is too old.

Milk. Get more milk.

Shake it until it's sour.

Ok, that's enough.

There's something wrong with these cows.

The milk is lying.

Do something!

Do something!

At the beginning of cartography,

of all the sandy hills that came out
of the sea like the whites,

came men with binoculars
to invent these mountains.

At 20, my great-grandfather
and his young wife

descend the Atlantic
to settle on this coast.

For her, the heat is
a waiting vulture.

Malaria, bronchitis, scarlet fever...

two miscarriages...

It becomes urgent to
go up the mountain.

This trip is prepared for weeks
and lasts for several days.

The party rides straight up
the slope of virgin forest,

clutching stones and trunks
with their hands.

They drink from the rivers
and eat from the trees...

When she is tired,
she is taken in a sling

by what they called "free slaves".

At 7000 feet is a
valley of mild climate.

A city is built, a System.

A church.

The scientist Nikola Tesla draws
attention to what modern science says:

that the sun is the past, the
earth the present, the moon the future.

We descend from an incandescent mass,

but to an icy one we'll give origin.

The laws of nature are relentless

and as everyone prepares for the next day...

the next day doesn't
even know we exist.

And here we are:
the world based on maps.

Much of the Earth is desolate
after excessive use of natural resources.

The catastrophe was faster
and more relentless

than our technology to
colonize new planets.

In the future, we will conquer
our right to distance.

Be away without being missed.

Celebrate our birthday alone,

without offending family or friends.

Acrylic will have covered the world,
the recycled earth.

In our dishes, the unmistakable
flavor of artificial fish.

The feeling called "longing" will be eradicated.

Memory will cease to be comparative

because we will be chemically and
technologically equipped

to live each new moment as
incomparably better than the last.

Maybe no one ever really knows when
they are reaching their destination.

But if it happens...

what weight or relief will be to keep an
animal that speaks with the voice of our mother?

At night I drift through the city

waiting for sleep.

I see through the dark:

It seems like nothing happened,
like the scar has no memory.

People rose from the rubble like zombies

and recreated a position
in life, in chaos;

They embraced nothingness and
filled the void with what was lying around.

This is the true post-catastrophe:

one in which convalescence is
worse than the bullet that wounded us.

-You were saying you're going
beyond the red dune?

-Yes. My mother was in the tragedy.

-I can't take you to your destination.

-No one ever goes past the bay
where the tragedy stopped.

-People don't like to go further.

-We need to respect that.

-I'll take you there....
Then you'll go on your own.

-Where to?

-Whoever comes here doesn't
want to be found.

In her letters she told me herself
how to get here.

But what good it it
if you're late already?

Keep the letters as a souvenir.

Is there a way to contact the survivers?

You may look from over the hills...

A few are isolated among the nothing.

When my mother hid herself from the world,

I thought she was running away;

but as I look at these mountains now
I have the abstract idea...

that she had 'found' something.

Some truth.

That I had passed a level and for no reason in the world,

not even for my sake...

would it make sense to go back.

I dreamed I was in the beyond.

Crowds making their way with the
elbows, looking for people.

I found her exausted...

in her grimy clothes as
in the day she died.

"Mother," I shouted as I threw
my arms around her.

She just stood there.

"Help me"...

"You're my mother!"

"There are no mothers here," she said

"Only the search."

"I found my own mother looking
for hers and so on."

"Mothers", she said...

..."parents, families, and lovers..."

"...are the place from which you came."

"Here we are each for himself."

"Here there is no help, no love,
only the search."

"And this is the meaning of death"

"This is how we spend eternity"

"In search of the love we no longer
know how to give."

I woke up with a start.

"And yet, my son..." she said.

"My son..."

Or did I dream?

It does not matter what you find.

What matters is the search,
the journey.

Could it be?

Could it be, mother?

-Friend, we are here.

-I told you I would bring you to the bay.

-But like we had said,
from here you're on you own.

-What are you going to do?

I'm going to try the water.

-Look, he's staring...

-Hey friend!

I realized in the dream that
she is not alive.

That the silence doesn't come from
the collapse of world communications

or from the death of couriers
and corporate media.

But I remembered the bird and
its myth of endurance and longevity.

I remembered the promise.

-There is no one there.

What about the bird?

The lady that lived over there had
a blue and yellow parrot.

Do you know what happened to it?

Nothing remained.

Do you know if anyone took it?

There was nothing left in the other town either...

...but one never knows.

The parrot sang in
your mother's voice.

For days after the tragedy, her voice
was still heard among the rubble.

A very sweet voice in the dust.

Someone must have taken him.

Anyone would want to keep
that voice forever.

Speak.

Speak.

-What do you want to hear?

Anything.

-So much time, so many miles,
and it doesn't matter what you hear?

Anything is better than nothing.

-I will give you three answers

to the questions you have.

Choose wisely.

-I came to get you,
I want you to come with me.

-I had my choice.

Why do you want to
take me away?

This voice is not me.

A voice is like the wind:

A gust that goes through
the crevice of a door.

At times it may sound like the
scream of someone we know

but it's only air moving.

Nothing.

-For you, it may be just air,
but for me it's much more.

It's everything that didn't happen
since you went away.

-You're not the kind of person who gets away
with that kind of sentimentalism.

Your mother left you.

Will you spend the rest of your
life playing the victim?

Look well at where you are.

Anyone who might have
survived out here

is much more a victim than you
or your mother.

-I had pictured you more insightful.

Not all misery is obvious.

What do you think you know about me
or things that marked me?

-At last the first question!

Remember that I'm a bird.

I have no obligation to have inherited
your mother's insight

which by the way was inexistent.

-I know that irony well.

Don't talk about winds going
through doors.

If you don't wish to come, it's okay.

You may well forget that
I was here

-Passive aggressiveness.

We are in family indeed.

-Where is your body?

-Who needs a body?

What does it represent?

-For you, nothing. For me
it's a change to finish this conversation.

-You only have one question left.

Time is ticking.