Los Salvajes presents itself as a story of escape and access to freedom for children unprepared for the civilized world. They flee and kill on their way: it is the price to pay to gain freedom.
When Nature and the outside world seem like places to express their true, albeit socially deficient identity, the journey of these teenagers reveals the thin line between Nature and Humanity.
Their journey does not consist in fleeing to return to the city, nor to settle somewhere: they flee to better find their place within Nature. And in this way, the connection between these teenagers and their environment appears stronger and stronger as their journey escalates. They flee, they loot, they take drugs, they kill, they make love, they talk, they kiss and sometimes, as if inadvertently, they communicate. Some make the unfortunate experience of natural selection: the smartests survive, the others perish, and the movie does not allow the slightest dramatization of this fundamentally natural event: dying.
Deaths are neither glorious nor honorable. Everyone faces their ability to kill, and for what reasons, in the face of what impulses?
Each one reveals little by little who they are and what they've done, by a gesture, an act, an unfortunate presence, a perverse look through the branches.
The characters blend into nature and imitate the behavior of wild boars and dogs : this is how humanity withdraws, in favor of the inevitable spontaneity of life in motion.
Very beautiful images emerge from this film. Especially this note that a girl rolled up and slipped into the barrel of the group leader's pistol. A note that surely said she was leaving, but that neither he nor the rest of the group knew how to read. So his addressee decides to let him go to the river, and this is how one of the only remnants of culture and humanity goes along the current, and gives way to the necessary survival.
Same for this boar that dogs sniff in the distance, accompanied by their improvised master. Dogs finally kill the prey, and the teenager puts several improvised machete blows in the stomach. He killed, as he could, and broke through in his violent nature. He finally accepts it by appearing on top of a rock, the skin of the slain beast on his head like the hunters of the past.
And finally, the ultimate symbolization of this fusion between Nature and Humanity: the final scene, with the same boy, near the fire, who, after a strange encounter with a character who is supposed to be dead, and who says to him "This is who you are", faces the fire, puts his hand in it, and ends up burning silently. Thus, the revelation of this wild nature is metaphorized by the pure and simple fusion between Man and Matter, by this man who catches fire silently, as a complete assimilation to his unstable and ephemeral nature.
When Nature and the outside world seem like places to express their true, albeit socially deficient identity, the journey of these teenagers reveals the thin line between Nature and Humanity.
Their journey does not consist in fleeing to return to the city, nor to settle somewhere: they flee to better find their place within Nature. And in this way, the connection between these teenagers and their environment appears stronger and stronger as their journey escalates. They flee, they loot, they take drugs, they kill, they make love, they talk, they kiss and sometimes, as if inadvertently, they communicate. Some make the unfortunate experience of natural selection: the smartests survive, the others perish, and the movie does not allow the slightest dramatization of this fundamentally natural event: dying.
Deaths are neither glorious nor honorable. Everyone faces their ability to kill, and for what reasons, in the face of what impulses?
Each one reveals little by little who they are and what they've done, by a gesture, an act, an unfortunate presence, a perverse look through the branches.
The characters blend into nature and imitate the behavior of wild boars and dogs : this is how humanity withdraws, in favor of the inevitable spontaneity of life in motion.
Very beautiful images emerge from this film. Especially this note that a girl rolled up and slipped into the barrel of the group leader's pistol. A note that surely said she was leaving, but that neither he nor the rest of the group knew how to read. So his addressee decides to let him go to the river, and this is how one of the only remnants of culture and humanity goes along the current, and gives way to the necessary survival.
Same for this boar that dogs sniff in the distance, accompanied by their improvised master. Dogs finally kill the prey, and the teenager puts several improvised machete blows in the stomach. He killed, as he could, and broke through in his violent nature. He finally accepts it by appearing on top of a rock, the skin of the slain beast on his head like the hunters of the past.
And finally, the ultimate symbolization of this fusion between Nature and Humanity: the final scene, with the same boy, near the fire, who, after a strange encounter with a character who is supposed to be dead, and who says to him "This is who you are", faces the fire, puts his hand in it, and ends up burning silently. Thus, the revelation of this wild nature is metaphorized by the pure and simple fusion between Man and Matter, by this man who catches fire silently, as a complete assimilation to his unstable and ephemeral nature.