Crime, Knowledge and the Photographic Object in La isla mínima

Abstract

This article explores the role of photography in the recent Spanish crime thriller La isla mínima (2014). It argues that the indexicality of the photographic object is the key to the allegorical message of the film, in which the criminal investigation also serves an historical investigation into the compromises that were made in the name of Spain’s transition to democracy. The photographic object in turn both reveals and conceals the extent to which violence was integral to the ‘pacto del olvido’ of the transition, and presents itself as an uncomfortable truth that Spain has not yet reconciled itself with. The article also discusses the influence of photography on the cinematography of the film, as well as the important role that El Caso and photojournalism played during these years.

Resumen

Este artículo explora el papel de la fotografía en el reciente thriller policial La isla mínima (2014). Sostiene que la indexicalidad del objeto fotográfico es la clave del mensaje alegórico de la película, en el que la investigación penal sirve también de investigación histórica de los compromisos que se hicieron en nombre de la transición de España a la democracia. El objeto fotográfico, a su vez, revela y oculta hasta qué punto la violencia formaba una parte integrante del ‘pacto de olvido’ de la transición y se presenta como una verdad incómoda con la que España todavía no se ha reconciliado. El artículo discute también la influencia de la fotografía en la cinematografía de la película, así como el importante papel que El Caso y el fotoperiodismo han desempeñado durante estos años.

Keywords:

• La isla mínima
• photography
• transition to democracy
• violence
• criminality
• El Caso

Palabras Clave:

• La isla mínima
• fotografía
• transición a la democracia
• violencia
• criminalidad
• El Caso

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dean Allbritton, Leigh Mercer, H. Rosi Song, and Sarah Thomas for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper given at SCMS Chicago 2017.

Notes

¹ The film was viewed by 1.3 million spectators. See the database of the Ministerio, Educación y Cultura: https://icaa.mecd.es/Datos_tecnicos_Peliculas.aspx

² The original aspect ratio of the film is listed as either 2.35:1 or 2.39:1, which both constitute the current widescreen cinema standard.

³ Despite Catalán’s nostalgia for celluloid, the film’s artistic team took full advantage of the malleability of the digital image during the film. Through the use of computer generated imagery, it was possible to make the location of Villafranco appear to be larger than the actual location that was filmed, through adding the digital backdrop of extra buildings that can be seen in the scene when the detectives first arrive in town. Elsewhere, when a bird is found in Juan’s bedroom late one night, its plumage is digitally coloured to resemble a more exotic species, perhaps even a hallucinatory figment of Juan’s imagination.

⁴ Cecilio, one of the peasants in La noche de los girasoles, is similarly killed with an agrarian tool, a pitchfork.

⁵ See Domínguez Rama 2011.

⁶ As Sarah Thomas (2017) has observed, in a paper entitled ‘The Intermedial Past in Recent Award-Winning Films from Spain’ given at SCMS in Chicago 2017, the footage seen here was taken from the two-part documentary Después de… primera parte: No se os puede dejar solos and Después de… segunda parte: Atado y bien Atado (Cecilia and José Juan Bartolomé, 1981), a film Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos note as a key influence. See Cobos and Rodríguez 2014, 162.

⁷ There is no evidence to suggest that Rodríguez was influenced by this fact when writing the screenplay to the film.