Earth (1996) User Reviews

Intense as well as offbeat drama with top-notch acting , superb photography and sensitive soundtrack

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 16 November 2013]

Spanish production with fine acting , colorful cinematography and rousing score by Alberto Iglesias . Julio Medem directed the film for Sogetel and Lolafilms and it was released in 1995 . Set in the Aragon region, this interesting and thought-provoking film dealing with a story of a solitary man named Angel , a strange young who comes to rid a small Spanish town of pests in the lands . The local wine-making industry has found these bugs responsible for giving their product an "earthy" taste that has worried local opinion . Meantime in the little town , Angel becomes involved with two gorgeous and very diverse females , the simple and shy Angela (Emma Suarez) , and the sex-hungry Mari (Silke) , both of whom impact deeply on his life . Furthermore , other rare characters such as Patricio (Karra Elejalde) and a Pub's owner named Alberto (Nancho Novo) appear in his life .

This is a slow-paced , deliberate though magnetic rural drama .It contains marvelous cinematography , breathtaking musical score and enjoyable production design . It is a riveting film though sometimes a little boring and overlong . Anyway, the film is interesting , thematically intriguing and strange ; Medem has his own style of telling a story . It is excellently played by a magnificent plethora of main actors such as Carmelo Gomez , Emma Suarez , Silke and Karra Elejalde , Julio Medem's ordinary . Very good acting by Carmelo Gomez as Angel, unsettling with a "ghost" of himself , he is a tiny grubs exterminator recently released from a mental hospital ; however , Antonio Banderas was supposed to play Ángel in the film, but due to schedule problems, director Julio Medem replaced him with Carmelo . Excellent performance by two beautiful women -Emma Suarez , Silke- who impact on a great scale about Angel/Carmelo Gomez life . Good support cast gives right performance and full of prestigious players such as Nancho Novo as Alberto , Txema Blasco as Tomás , Miguel Palenzuela as Tío Ángel and Pepe Viyuela as Ulloa . Intriguing as well as evocative musical score mirroring well the scenery, its people and the story line, it was superbly composed by several times Oscar nominated Alberto Iglesias , Julio Medem's usual . In addition , a spotless pictorial cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe and a willingness , almost perfect of the elements of each shot , every sequence , every space ; being rightly filmed in Calatayud, Cariñena, Cosuenda , Paniza , Zaragoza, Aragón . Aguirresarobe subsequently would make a prestigious career in Hollywood such as ¨Fright night , ¨The twilight saga: eclipse¨, ¨The road¨ , ¨The others¨ and many others .

The motion picture was well produced by Manuel Lombardero and originally directed by Julio Medem , this his third movie, "Tierra," released in 1996, was selected for the Cannes Film Festival . Medem had been making short movies with a super-8 camera owned by his father until he received a call from a new production company called Sogetel and executive producers Fernando de Garcillán , José Luis Olaizola , Enrique López Lavigne . They were interested in his script titled "Vacas" . It won the Goya Award from the Spanish academy for best new director, and won prizes in the festivals of Tokyo, Torino and Alexandria. In 1993 Medem made his second movie, "The red squirrel¨. It confirmed Medem's talents and won prizes in Fort Lauderdale, Bogota and Bucarest. In 1998 Medem released " The lovers of the Polar Circle ," considered his best movie by most of his fans . It also became a box-office hit with more than one million spectators in Spain and was also released worldwide. In 2001 his fourth movie, "Lucia and sex ," became a huge hit and began the career of actress Paz Vega who won the Goya for best new actress . Although in 2003 failed with the release , "The Basque ball" , a documentary that portrays the phenomenon of nationalism and terrorism in the Basque Country of northern Spain , it was very polemical and partial . In 2007 directed the flop ¨Caotica Ana¨ and in 2010 , ¨Room in Rome¨, a successful though with not sense film , plenty of nudism and only starred by two gorgeous naked girls . Julio Medem is for sure one of the the most important and original Spanish filmmaker. Well worth watching if you get the chance .

A brilliant Spanish fantasy.

[raymond-15 · 8/10 · 28 February 2000]

"Tierra" is an interesting metaphysical Spanish fantasy with an unusual central character called Angel who by his own admission is half man, half angel, and he also admits to a turn in hospital to cure his hyperactive imagination. What's more , he's a first class fumigator who with the help of casual gypsy labour rids the soil of woodlice. The story opens in vineyard country, red dry undulating fields of gnarled vines, swirling red dust before an approaching storm, a lightning strike that splits a tree in half and kills a shepherd and some of his lambs. A great dramatic introduction that sets the scene for what is to follow. The film does not explain how the presence of woodlice gives the wine an earthy flavour which is said to be most desirable. The camera work is great, especially in the fumigation scene where the recruited workers dressed in white protective clothing move methodically through the red vineyards with their probing tubes, the white fumes swirling around them. They look like extra-terrestrial beings. There are numerous references to the dimensions of the universe, to the spaciousness of creation. The film starts with a panoramic vision of the stars and ends with a flight of birds wheeling in the sky. Yes, producer Medem works on a broad canvasa with incredible artistry. The love interest in the film is provided by Angela, a farmer's wife in love with the newly-arrived Angel, and Mari a sexy little thing in tight Spanish leather who frequents the bars and is quite a deft hand at billiards too. Her snake-like movements are very seductive and Angel begins to admire them, too,but being half angel has its own special problems. I like particularly the hospital scene where Angel's uncle says there is a charming girl waiting to see him. Is it Angela or Mari? We are teased for quite some time before her identity is revealed. I liked too the stark white hospital room- such a contrast to the red sweep of the Spanish countryside. Most of all I liked Gomez as Angel. What a charmer!

Metaphysical Earth

[Chrysanthepop · 2 November 2011]

Julio Medem's 'Tierra' has that same feel of surrealism, poetry and magic that his other works, namely 'Vacas', 'Los Amantes del Circulo Polar', 'La Ardilla Roja'. His films are a genre of their own. Medem has penned a solid screenplay and done a fine job of showing it on screen. He often works on a broad campus.

The visuals are very simple yet the way Medem and his cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe capture them makes them look extraordinary. The film is set in a remote Spanish countryside surrounded by simple earthy brown landscape. Yet the moving images beautifully capture the richness of texture, mood, emotion, sound, symbolism and dialogue. Alberto Iglesias's score is equally spellbinding. Carmelo Gómez, Emma Suárez, Karra Elejalde, Silke and Nancho Novo are in top form. Gómez does one of his best works here.

I'll refrain from mentioning anything about the story because, like most of Medem's films, this one is more worthy experiencing rather than just hearing.

Surreal

[schroeder-gustavo · 7/10 · 11 October 2015]

From the opening scene to the end, Earth is a very non conventional movie. It's plot seems weird at times, even nonsensical, the characters seem like cartoons and one-dimensional at times, doesn't really make sense. But once you understand what the film is truly about, you can really get what Medem was trying to achieve here.

And it works, most of the time. The main character's struggle to choose really between his sexual desire and his want to settle down is very intriguing, and a story I believe many men can identify with. The acting is pretty solid for the most part and the cinematography is great, but the movie feels too slow at times, sometimes it just feels like the movie is going nowhere. The main character, although he is written to be that way, feels way too creepy at times and his moves don't really make a whole lot of sense. The movie feels a lot like a documentary at times and not a film, which kind of explains the slow pace. The movie gets pretty confusing, especially towards the end and I don't think everything has a very clear meaning. I mean, it's clear Medem wanted to say something with the clouds and lightning and some other things, but, as a director you have to be able to make it clear to your audience what you are trying to say. Even if it is done in the most subtle ways.

Despite all of its flaws, Earth is pretty thought provoking film that is well acted, well shot, and although it may get pretty confusing at times, it's worth the watch.

Medem's masterpiece

[alice liddell · 9/10 · 26 January 2000]

If you tell a story through a certain protagonist's mind, your film is going to take on the qualities of that mind. Medem's typically ambiguous TIERRA, is one of the masterpieces of 90s cinema, and has not so much an open ending as an open beginning and in-between as well. Its hero is either deranged or a heavenly spirit, and, seen through his eyes, the world, and the film, take on an otherworldly strangeness.

As with all Medem's films, TIERRA operates on two levels of meaning - the surface narrative, and the underlying composition of image and form. Both levels interact much more fluidly, though, here, creating a work that always seems to make enough sense, and yet, when you think about it, only increases in bewildering enigma. The film starts with a voiceover talking to someone called Angel through the cosmos, informing him of the job he has to do, showing him the island he will be working on, and warning him of the mysteries riddled therein.

Angel turns out to be an insect fumigator, come to destroy the woodlice that are infesting the island's vineyards. On the way he comes across gypsies minding sheep, and the shepherd who was struck down by lightening, momentarily resuscitated by another volt before dying again. Angel hires the gypsies, and visits the first farmer, Tomas, in mourning for his recently deceased wife. He has a daughter, Angela, with whom he falls in love. Angel later befriends her husband, Patricio, who nearly kills him while out shooting the equally pestilant wild boars, but they come into conflict when Patricio's sex-mad mistress, Mari, shows insatiable interest in Angel.

The never resolved crux of the film turns on whether Angel is really an angel, or, as his history of psychiatric care would suggest, a madman. Once we find out that he was once mad, we assume that all his visions and heightenings of reality are the effects of a troubled mind. Angel himself yearns for simplicity and unity, but is constantly being torn apart. Despite the vast expansiveness of the land he finds himself in, he is continually hemmed in, by repetition, patterns. The woman he loves, and her daughter share his name, the latter's teacher has that of her husband.

He has a constant feeling of deja vu though he denies ever having been in the place before, even if it's some coincidence that his psychiatric warden should have a new job here. Events throughout the film repeat and turn in on themselves - the bug fumigation and boar-hunt, each evincing different levels of Angel's control. His persistant attempts to master his environment, his mind, his desires, the universe, are like the preposterously intricate patterning of a mad man. His self literally divides in front of him, he talks to himself.

The status of the image in front of us is always unstable - we don't know whether he's imagining it or not. His mental troubles extend to physicality, and the film seems to adopt Bunuel's tactic in THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE, with two different women representing different elements of sexuality open to Angel - quiet, maternal, nurturing on the one hand, and red hot sex on the other.

But even this misogynistic dichotomy is complicated - the two women are separate, independent beings in their own right, not 'aspects' of woman; and whereas Fernando Rey was an image of besieged masculine unity, Angel is, as I have mentioned, completely at odds with himself. It is he who becomes Bunuel's woman, he who is split. The women refuse their stereotyped roles - the 'quiet' one is desperate for sex, after years of loveless marriage, as well as warmth and sympathy, while the nympho is trying to find love after years of promiscuity. Angel's troubles extend to his control over his narrative, his switching back and forth between times, spaces and realms; his splitting between narrated and narrating self; his adding new elements and information to past events, playing with both ellipsis and excess of point of view, rendering all information deeply unreliable.

All of this would be quite conclusive proof of madness. Even his facility with the dead could be simply imaginary. But what of his reuniting Tomas with his dead wife - can this JUST be empathy? Ditto the profuse Biblical symbolism and allusionism. What about his transformation of the mere EARTH into an otherworldy planet, with its Martian red surface and spacemen fumigators? Maybe madness is otherworldly, acccessing the madman to plains of insight and experience inaccessible to the ordinary person. This isn't a crass way of saying that the 'mad' are more special than the 'normal' are - maybe we castigate as mad anyone without our tunnel vision. Angel is the director of the film - his formal ordering is the film's - as VACAS suggested, maybe the only way to see anew is to cast off the normal.

If I've made TIERRA seem like too much of a riddle than a film than I'm an idiot. Its brilliance lies in, as the title suggests, grounding such wispy concerns. Every character IS a character, with their own sadnesses, failures, lusts and needs - Angel's vision, though repeatedly self-serving, is always empathetic. The film is also wonderfully funny, with one excellent sequence of sex farce, mixed with some blacker, more brutal comedy.

One sits in awe at Medem's cinematic mastery, his adept handling of both long shot and extreme close-up, the wider view and the crucial detail. He plays with narrative like it is plastercine, the seemingly solid infinitely pliable, like the earth covered with louses. In a film obsessed with death, he assserts life and the comic spirit, accomodating, not refuting, the abyss. Human beings, like Angel, are too complicated to 'understand' - we must simply accept and enjoy the confusion.

Life in a little town

[Icaro · 7/10 · 6 November 1998]

A man with psychical problems comes to a little town to solve farmer's grape and wine troubles. He falls in love at a time with a married woman and a young girl, and he gets in troubles with Angela's husband. Julio Medem show us how complicated can be our lives, even if you are in a little and quite place, and how a choice can change your whole life.

amazingly amazing

[soulcharmer · 10/10 · 24 March 2004]

It would be easy to let your personality split in two if you'll get caught in situation like Angel from Tierra did. Except he had kinda split personality in advance...

I guess you've never seen story about love this exceptional. There's a lot of strong symbolism, compelling plot, absolutely perfect camera, absolutely lovely characters, flawless acting, dreamy atmosphere, unexpected twists in storyline and more.

In whole this movie is special, original and ultimately appealing. I tried to find something to reproach, some imperfection, and though I've already seen the movie three times over the years, I can't help but to award it with 10 out of 10.

The Grub Exterminator!

[tim-764-291856 · 7/10 · 20 March 2012]

I watched this as part of the six DVD Spanish release Julio Medem 'Collection', easily the most cost effective way of getting his first six films.

Quite weirdly wonderful, this sums up all that is good - and bad - about World cinema. Forever inventive and beguiling, one just doesn't know where either the narrative or camera will take us next. But that weirdness and fantasy can leave one confused and wishing for a more concise reality.

Medem's immense imagination - who else could summon a screenplay on the back of a just a grub-exterminator just released from an insane asylum? but also make it work. I've never come across any director quite as unique as Julio Medem.

I do like and enjoyed this film but in my opinion, it isn't quite up there with his best, which is The Red Squirrel, followed by Sex & Lucia, then Lovers Of the Arctic Circle.

Beautiful movie

[tpolakov-2 · 9/10 · 4 November 2002]

It is a beautiful movie (as most of Medem's movies are), visually absolutely stunning, with very good actors and a very human(istic) plot. It sometimes gets complicated, sometimes it does not make too much sense, but at the end it does not really matter. Probably the best way to enjoy this film is to let the images guide you into their dizzying magical world and you will then feel deep inside what it is all about.

Not for the lazy brained

[jmabel · 9/10 · 20 December 1999]

I liked this film a great deal. Medem is a wonderful director, who can take you for more of a ride with plot alone than most other directors can do with special effects: keep your brain in high gear to follow this story.

Among other twists, we are left to wonder just how much is Angel's hallucination and how much is really occurring. The only fault I can find with the film is that this is not left even more open: I'd rather not know that there is any particular reason to doubt Angel's sanity.

I loved the notion of an exterminator (named Angel, no less) sent to kill off an epidemic of burrowing insects that change the flavor of the local wine, even though he rather likes the altered taste, as do at least some of the locals. I also felt that the theme of a man being drawn carnally to one woman and equally strongly (but less physically) to another, while it has been explored often -- too often -- has seldom been explored better or in a manner more appropriate to the cinema.

Settle back with a glass of Rioja and watch it. Maybe twice.

Tedious and ultimately unsatisfying

[howard.schumann · 5/10 · 4 October 2004]

Angel (Carmelo Gomez) is a fumigator who visits a wine growing area in order to kill the woodlice that infest the soil and give the wine a distinctively wooden flavor. Tierra, Julio Medem's first film after The Red Squirrel, is a tour de force about a man seeking a balance between his inner world and outer reality. Tierra begins with a trip through space from the outer galaxies descending to Earth in an agricultural area. Beautifully photographed by Javier Aguirresarobe, the bare landscape with its orange and brown colors, gives the land a look of strangeness. Angel has a running dialogue with his other self (his angel). He had been treated in a mental hospital for multiple personality disorder but it is not clear whether he is a spirit guide, an alien visitor, or a paranoid schizophrenic.

Angel claims that he has been sent down to Earth for a divine mission, and that he is half-man and half-angel, half-alive and half-dead. Angel hires local gypsies to help him fumigate the land, a project eagerly approved by the town, and they walk through the land covered in white protective suits that look like they were borrowed from the wardrobe of the movie ET. The half of Angel that is alive is torn between the sweet wholesome blond Angela (Emma Suarez) and the over-sexed eighteen-year old redhead Mari (Silke Hornillos Klein). Both are attached to a mean-spirited local farmer named Patricio (Karra Elejalde), one as his neglected wife, the other as his mistress.

Angel claims that he is in love with Angela but is slowly seduced by the playfully aggressive Mari. The selection of a lover takes on profound philosophical underpinnings as it becomes a struggle for his soul, reflecting his own split personality, real or imagined. Along the way he has to deal with death by lightning, suicide, wild boar hunts, and a jealous husband. Replete with awkward ruminations about duality, death, and the nature of life, however, the film unfortunately loses its narrative focus and becomes tedious and muddled. Without the metaphysics, Tierra could have been an intriguing look at the nature of human desire and the way we make choices about relationships. While the film contains fine performances and an intriguing sense of magic realism, I found Tierra to be an ultimately unsatisfying experience.

Brilliant!

[iamito · 10/10 · 27 June 2001]

At first it looks like a very unusual movie. The main character's Voice-Overs, etc.. But the movie gradually gains very strong ideas. Great photography, great actors and actresses... It's just amazing. I don't know much about the Spanish cinema but this is my favorite spanish movie so far. Definitely.

Understated mood quasi-masterpiece

[heather1252 · 9/10 · 24 March 2002]

After seeing "Sex and Lucia" by writer-director Julio Medem, I decided to rent this film and was gratified with one of the best works of international cinema. From the beginning we are fascinated by the world introduced through the main character, an agricultural technician supposedly recently out of a mental hospital. Along the way we get to doubt most everything. We experience a different world that opens up with unexpected violence and repressed longing. The cinematography, production design and performances are extraordinary until the very end, which as with most Julio Medem films happen to be a commercial cop-out of sorts. In the last two minutes, when it all goes in one direction, the writer-director insists in imposing his (overly sentimental) views on his tormented characters and previously constructed world. Rather than let things go towards their ultimate logical consequences and grand finale, it makes for a silly little ending. Still, a must video rent if you want a thought piece with humor and thriller elements.

An Earlier Gem by Medem

[ronchow · 9/10 · 11 April 2013]

My first exposure to Medem's films was through 'Lovers of the Artic Circle'. Right away I grew fond of his style of directing - meditative, philosophical at times, poetic, personal and often abstract. 'Tierra' was one of his earlier films, dated 1996. However, time has not eroded the film's merit.

The protagonist, called Angel, had just come out of a mental institution and was struggling to get back to a normal life of work and love. In love he was linked up to two women, played by Emma Suarez and a young Silke. Both very attractive to look at and contributed to a few very erotic moments in the film.

'Tierra' told the story of Angle's mental struggle, and the struggle of others around him. There is really no message in the film despite the many quotes relating to atoms, stars and the universe. What we are left with is a story of human interaction and struggle, and love. This is one very usual human drama and well told by Medem.

differently brilliant

[lenzorg · 10/10 · 10 March 2009]

You will get a faster heartbeat even though the story is not that good. It is not important how many imaginative friends the protagonist has, you don't have to follow the story. The film takes you everywhere he wants, and even if it does not make sense to you, you will be completely spellbound. Strange. Important are only the scenes and their composition, this awkward landscape and the people. There is this post-apocalyptic cloud hanging over every shot, a bit like Mad Max, where everybody is just crazy and aggressive. I was also a bit reminded of Farenheit by Truffaut in the style and the leprous main character.

There is indeed lots of symbolism in it but that does not make the movie cheaper but richer. Most movies try symbolism and fail, being too ambitious, this one doesn't. It is brilliant and unique, watch it.

great!

[Anetka · 10/10 · 16 April 2002]

Very nice and good film! Full of fate and passion! You have to see it! Excellent perfomances and acting concert of Carmelo Gomez, Emma Suarez and Silke. This film made great impression on me. I like also The Red Squirrel from Julio Medem. And Carmelo Gomez is so sexy in this picture!

On the line of Medem's filmography

[gerardo-5 · 27 May 1999]

The film tells the story of a technician who comes to a little village to solve the problem of the local wines, they taste to soil, in that task he will find several charachters that will start to enter wildly in his life. To me this one is the most discret film in the career of Julio Medem, a genial creator. Even if the film follows the general guidelines of the rest of the filmography of Medem (symbolism and psychologicalism), it lacks of the potence to attract so much the audience.