'La linea inivisble' is a serious film, but one deeply ingrained in the current soporific cinematography: slow, intimate and minimalist. The plot almost completely ignores ETA's ideological motivations and the political issues of the period, which one would expect to be its chore element. Instead it concentrates on the interiority of the protagonists, portayed in lingering, stretched out frescos of everyday life.
The director seeks to spot at all costs sorrowful aspects in the characters' psyche, and this leads him to styling them questionably. For example the protagonist, Txabi Etxebarrieta, described by the sources as a brilliant personality, full of energy and apt to catalyze his companions' energies around him, is turned into a kind of introverted nerd who mainly chooses to fight the Franco's state out of emulation toward an older brother and because of a missed romance.
This sombre mood is then used to disapprove of the choice to take arms as a kind of self-detrimental and self-deluding folly, which no healthy youth would seriously contemplate.
The very few scenes of gunfighting or street turmoil are realized in a static and unrealistic way, as it might have been done 50 years ago. The director is not interested in them.
The three stars are bound to my expectations that a film on this topic discusses the social, political and ideological landscape of the period. If you like the mental masturbations that represent the chore of degenerate art, feel free to consider it an eight or nine-stars production.
