Part 1: The Tightrope (2024). The first installment in Mariano Llinás’s new documentary trilogy about the Argentine artist group Mondongo sets up two scenarios. The first involves the creation of Mondongo’s El Baptisterio de los Colores, a baptistry made from an assortment of plasticine colors inspired by the Swiss painter Johannes Itten’s famous treatise on color, Kunst der farbe (“The Art of Color”). The second involves Llinás’s attempt to make a cinematic portrait of the two artists that currently make up Mondongo. However, this attempt is quickly abandoned. Llinás’s film is fractured from the outset, but such is his method. His films are known to spiral in several directions, questioning their premises and dispensing with narrative coherence in their search for more arcane mysteries; it is clear that he is a disciple of Jorge Luis Borges when it comes to storytelling—and, it would not be inappropriate to call many of his films literature, in the sense meant by Jonathan Rosenbaum when he speaks of cinema as “literature by other means.” Yet, the byzantine nature of Llinás’s films also owes much strictly to cinema—Orson Welles’s dizzying control of deep focus, Alfred Hitchcock’s layered plots, and Jacques Rivette’s ouroboric storylines. The Tightrope presents us with a doubling from the get-go, as his intention to make one film splits into two scenarios; in turn, yielding two more films. Llinás fittingly samples Bernard Herrmann’s score from Vertigo (1958) throughout The Tightrope.
Part 2: Portrait of Mondongo (2024). Near the end of The Tightrope, Llinás writes a long poem on Microsoft Word in which he details his inability to direct a portrait of Mondongo. Portrait of Mondongo proceeds from this point onward. A series of recorded conversations between Llinás, who tramples over his subjects’ speech, and Mondongo’s members reveals their relationship is rocky. His decision to have these members re-watch their arguments with the hopes of re-staging them reveals the intensity of his arrogance—a flare of genius and a hindrance in portraiture, which so often demands meekness from portraitists so that their subjects feel comfortable enough to reveal themselves. Llinás’s decision to include a sequence in which Mondongo is seen creating their famous plasticine portraits in silence stresses the difference between their approaches to arts. Naturally, Llinás plays into his character as the film’s villain and sets up a duel between himself and his subjects: whomever makes the better version of Kunst der Farbe will receive ￡5,000. His soundtrack of choice here is first Psycho (1960), then Marnie (1964). The latter is chosen to emphasize the tempestuousness of Llinás’s relationship to Mondongo. The film, which was originally titled The Tempest, is of a violent character. It is a film full of interruptions and mostly focuses on broken communication, between artists and friends. Alluding to Llinás’s evil character, it ends with the following note: “Fritz Lang will return.”
Part 3: Kunst der farbe (2024). The last film in Llinás’s three-part contra-portrait of Mondongo is his own adaptation of Kunst der farbe. He admits that he was unable to film Mondongo realize their art, so he created his own version of their project. As in so many of his films, he successfully stages a coup—from behind the camera to its point-of-focus, from supporting character to protagonist, from periphery to center-stage. Kunst der farbe is a beautiful palimpsest that overlays different colors, colorful characters, musings on art, and film history to create a dizzying, self-reflexive cinematic work. Like its companion pieces, it reveals its influence by sampling several episodes from Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires (1915-16)—a dual comment on the vampirism and seriality of his project. As promised, Llinás makes an appearance as Fritz Lang in a makeshift outfit—monocle and all. He raises a rapier at the camera, as though challenging the viewer. But really, what he presents is his image in a defensive position, disguised as a villain, and what he stages is himself shielding himself from the screen, refuting outside interpretation. Near the end of Kunst der farbe, his colorist discusses how silver is actually a more reflective color than white. Llinás, whose synapses are quick to seize on word association, notes that cinema is often referred to as “the silver screen.” Here, he identifies cinema as a reflexive art; his own inability to make a film about something else, to transform a portrait into a self-portrait a natural cause of the medium’s design. Herein lies his genius: to make the banal—a simple documentary portrait, a mere commission—bizarre. Or, to invoke Hitchcock, his muse throughout The Triptych of Mondongo, his genius lies in his ability to induce vertigo.
The Triptych of Mondongo screens this afternoon, March 1, at the Museum of Modern Art as part of “Doc Fortnight 2025.”
