Francisco de Quevedo left a journey to the other shore of the Styx in the literary canon. He set sail from Ecclesiastes (dust to dust) and dusted "the terminal shadow" .
The sonnet Love that endures beyond death is positioned by Quevedo at the arrival of that journey, that happens "in the white day". But an obligatory, not voluntary, journey without return is actually an exile. Exile in which, Quevedo says, he would not abandon the memory of all the love that was already burning on the other part of the bank, and that although it will be turned into ashes, its materiality is irrelevant.
The film They will be dust places a journey of this type (to death) in the moment before departure, and metaphysics is dispensed with. The best thing it gives us is being able to interpret it from two points of view, since there are two travelers. To do justice the protagonist should be the healthy one, who undertakes the journey voluntarily, but we can at any time put the spotlight on his partner, who will do it completely against his will, like Quevedo did
But the film has little relation with the aforementioned sonnet. And by placing the film, unlike the poem, before setting sail for the other shore, the result is totally anti-poetic. Thus, the most sinister situations have to occur: from the domestic conflicts in the heterogeneous family that this couple has formed, to the sordidness of the aseptic euthanasia-friendly Switzerland. Given the threat of a melodramatic turn, how will the film avoid shipwreck? Well, let's go to the mix of genres and introduce musical numbers, and have everyone dance with their necks dislocated by computer-assisted images. It is actually nothing new (in our time we go very fast and this mix already sounds quite familiar to us)
The script is truly intelligent, but it seems very pawed, and has put together a story with more traps than a cannibal film. As a demonstration of the unscrupulous foundation of the story, I propose to imagine two assumptions that, if incorporated into it, would collapse this film. One would be to imagine a reversal of roles between the sexes (that the terminally ill spouse was the man and the suicidal one was the woman): I doubt it would be accepted unanimously in today's society.
The other scenario that I propose would be to introduce, in a symmetrical way to those with the woman (magnificent Ángela Molina), other comic musical numbers that mock the suicidal decision. Sure, it will be said, the thing can adopt techniques of "distancing" and musical comedy for her, but not for him. The mockery of death, the black humor, is nothing new, but if those last numbers of tanato-slapstick had the suicidal as its protagonist, the film would be very different. We understand that to enforce this symmetry they would have had to paw the script a little more, and now we would be talking about another movie. But in this one we will not see that the husband takes part in the musical numbers, it seems that the unspeakable aspiration of the matter is that at the end some little tear will flow, whatever it may be. And then a soap opera song above the crematorium oven. Poor Quevedo
But it will not be denied that the journey we have contemplated leaves many interesting side effects along the way, which are the best part of the film. It is an achievement to constantly change our points of view: between hers, the terminally ill wife (a magnificent portrait of the paradigm of inequality in the intensity of love in the couple; it is even legitimate to doubt that she is in love at all, except of herself) and that of the suicidal husband who, if he even minimally joined the current of comedy, he would look like a slapping fool. It also gets the plot of children in the story right (even grandchildren are briefly introduced: what a pity that the discovery of death for children is not more developed). The visual design is consistent and is a good idea that it evolves towards white colour, surely inspired by the sonnet (Quevedo's sonnet only serves to give the title to the film and this type of ideas, do not think of anything else) but much less achieved there is the foreseeable appearance of ashes.
The comedic tone allows us to inscribe this film in a great archetype, one formulated by Fellini: the duo formed by the serious white clown and the clown Auguste. I already said that, on the verge of looking like the white-faced clown of the slaps, the serious husband (with the gravity of an Argentinian stuffed with self-help literature), is constantly mocked by the other clown, the Auguste brilliantly played by Ángela Molina (an evil Gelsomina). These are the risks of mixing genres, which a priori is praiseworthy. But the biggest risk of a film is in changing the tone. The story has been well told and its course constantly appeals to the viewer's position in the face of death, but in the ending there is an emergence of elements of intrigue, and doubt appears. And it's not only the co-star who doubts, the film also makes us doubt what will be the tone that prevails. That of the little tear? That of Busby Berkeley choreography? That of Stan and Laurel? The end of the film chooses to annul all seriousness, and leave us blank in "the white day" of Quevedo. Let's not say death is not the end, let's say death is not serious. Maybe it's a better consolation. But her death or his? Which clown wins?
