6. 'Liverpool'

A man (Juan Fernández) lives and works in the bowels of a gigantic container ship, rumbling its way across the surface of the ocean. In the first few minutes of Argentinean director Lisandro Alonso's "Liverpool" we have a palpable sense of what it's like to be aboard the claustrophobic industrial world of that vessel. Seven hours from the Tierra del Fuego port of Ushuia (at the tip of South America, the southernmost city in the world), he asks his captain if he can go ashore: "I was born there. I'd like to see if my mother's still alive." It's a matter-of-fact statement, as if he were saying, "I'd like to use the rest room," and, in context, it's electrifying. Once on solid ground, equipped with a winter jacket and a bottle of vodka, he trudges through the snow toward the village of his birth under his own power. The longish takes and crystalline images of "Liverpool" present us with a story in which, in terms of plot and action, almost "nothing happens." But that's a deceptive description. "Liverpool" operates by pulling us in and allowing us to piece together what's happening from close observation. A movie is always about what happens to you when you watch it (the details you notice, the questions you ask, the emotions you feel), and "Liverpool" offers us glimpses into human mysteries submerged in the memories and the hearts of the people on the screen. It is all the richer because it lets us discover its rewards for ourselves. -- Jim Emerson