As the film progresses, we see how the group of friends, former revolutionaries, relax: drinking wine, lying on the lawn enjoying the sun, chatting, reciting poetry, doing some mountain climbing, exploring a nearby mine for gold and for some, throwing the balls in the game known as "bolo", discussing on how to make the Buddhist "swastiak sign" with the rice in the paella, for one of the ladies, tending to the tomato patch in the estate early in the morning (intimations of the ending of Voltaire's Candide?). Whether outside on the lawn or inside at the dining table, the talk of Rafael's male guests sooner or later drifted imperceptibly to subjects like investment, opportunities for profit and money. At the start of the film, we got a quotation from Lenin to the effect that bankers are in fact helping socialism. But in the middle of the film we hear Rafael declaring that the Revolution has failed, implying perhaps that from now on, the only way of life now open to the people is life under the capitalist system with its incessant concern about money and its periodic crises. As one of them says,"There are no seasons of the year, no sun which shines, no flowers which bloom, no song of calendars, no frogs: only money." We get the impression that all the men feel a certain nebulous and undefined pressure of some kind of impending financial crisis in view of their dwindling wealth. However, as far as we can see in the film, none of them appear to be taking any specific or concrete steps to avert the same. They merely carry on as if somehow their problem would resolve itself. Perhaps they realize that ultimately money is a fluid, changeable and interchangeble entity which can't really be controlled but something which takes the substance out from all human relations and render them amorphous, abstract, unreal and meaningless, subject only to the unpredictable laws of the equally abstract and impersonal "market". The women however seem totally unconcerned about money, only about relationships, singing, performing and playing music. Perhaps the men and certainly the women think that the best way to deal with it is to ignore it and just concentrate on living in the present and snatch as much happiness as they can find in the here and now? Whatever the true position may be, when night time comes, we find Domingo climbing down a ladder from the window of the pianist' room after they had played 4-handed piano earlier in that day. Some days (?) later (the film doesn't say), Domingo and Katrin are gone and a note was left by Domingo for all the others on the breakfast table telling them that they have met Mr. Müller who appears a pleasant man, that it was cold there and that Müller sends his regards to them all. Raphael's son is disconsolate. Then first one of the female guests sings a song about a swallow leaving. She was joined in that song by all the others, one by one until all were singing that song together and the film ends.
The script of El Complejo de dinero, directed by Juan Rodrigáñez (b. 1971)who ran an art gllary and co-edited a poetry review, as his cinematic debut, was written by Eloy Enciso, Eduard Mont de Palol and Juan Rodrigáñez and is inspired by based on Franziska zu Reventlow's 1916 eponymous novel about the conflict between love and money, whether love, friendship or money should be the principles guiding modern life. In many ways, it's a most unusual film. Perhaps just a dream and a make-belief world in which the women try their best not to think about money and just focus on their relationship with art and men. If we may rely on the final scene, it seems that the men agree with the womenfolk. Perhaps, in this world apparently dominated by relations built upon the cash nexus and the inevitable uncertainties of the market, there's not very much we can do except to accept our fate and to sing about the unpredictabilities of life? Perhaps real human life can begin only when and to the extent that we bring ourselves outside of the pernicious influence of money, by resorting to a certain kind of madness, a kind of madness which makes us oblivious of the danger of ignoring the power of money? In a dance imitating the gait a chicken as performed all alone by Francisca on an empty room on the first floor of the villa or in a song begun by her under and amongst the trees in the villa's garden or in the four-handed harmony of a piano play by a man and a woman as if the two were one, as was done by Julio with the visiting pianist on the first floor of the villa, above and away from the "down to earth" reality of the ground floor?
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