Sebastiàn Diaz Morales’ film The Man with the Bag takes us into the barren landscape of Patagonia. The protagonist, an elegantly dressed middle-aged man, is pulling a wheeled suitcase behind him. In several episodes, the camera follows the man over rocky ground, through thorny undergrowth, up to jagged rock formations, down to the sea and back again. The wheeled suitcase transforms into a bag of bones, with which the protagonist is unable to part.
Initially, there the film is slapstick-like when, for example, the man stumbles along, donning a billowing coat and a comical Buster Keaton hat on his head. Yet, as the movie progresses, it becomes evident the man is moving in circles, and not just in a physical sense. His doomed situation becomes increasingly existential. His last hope seems to be a car that is slowly approaching on the horizon; but this also turns out to be a mistake.
In his film The Man with the Bag, Sebastiàn Diaz Morales tells a highly poetic tale about memories from the past that one drags through one’s life; although these provide us with roots, they ultimately also prevent us from venturing out and breaking new ground.
Sebastiàn Diaz Morales, born in 1975 in Comodoro Rivadavia, a port and industrial city in Argentina, lives in Amsterdam. He is well acquainted with the barren landscape between the Patagonian steppe and the Atlantic coast from his childhood, and he has repeatedly made it the subject of his videos. Using elements of alienation, he succeeds in transforming the subjective view of his homeland into a poetic metaphor for humankind’s inner turmoil.
