Somewhere around the middle of the decidedly post-modern screening of Enrique Rosas’ Mexican silent classic, “El Automovil Gris” (“The Grey Automobile”), at the Goodman Theatre on Friday night, things took a turn for the absurd.
The English subtitles assumed a life of their own, morphing from one typeface to another, rushing up and down the screen and mirroring the way the characters in the action-movie ran towards and away from the camera. Languages went from Japanese to Spanish to English with dizzying rapidity, as Scott Joplin was cranked out on an upright piano. One character took on the vocal qualities of Donald Duck. And the people providing the soundtrack voices even did a little dance in front of the screen.
That’s not to say the evening ever was conventional. One doesn’t typically see a Japanese actress (Irene Akiko Iida) from a Mexican theater company playing numerous characters in a blood-and-guts movie on an epic scale somewhat akin to D.W. Griffiths’ roughly contemporaneous “Intolerance.” If the best internationalist theater always probes border and boundary crossings, Mexico’s Certain Inhabitants’ Theatre spills over and across so many aesthetic parameters, it makes you dizzy.
And best of all, this company imbues its substantial piece of highly original performance work with a palpable sense of fun.
Performed as part of the Goodman Theatre’s Latino Theatre Festival, Certain Inhabitants’ hugely entertaining and provocative version of “Automovil” pays homage to the Japanese tradition of “benshi.” Therein, live actors would accompany silent films, providing multiple character voices and sound effects, with the added benefit of live music. But what clearly most interested Certain Inhabitants was the element of “benshi” wherein the live performers also provided commentary and explanation on movies that were usually foreign imports.
That practice allows exploration of the notion of otherness and a probing of the nature of time-bound spectatorship, which ensures that even seemingly coherent, fixed texts like old movies constantly shift in meaning along with the perceptions of audiences.
“Automovil” is such an interesting film, it’s worth seeing just to watch this rare screening. Inspired by the exploits of the real-life Grey Automobile Gang, the movie was made in the same locales where the actual terrorizing took place. And one could hardly argue that this live version undermines the original film, since at least two soundtracks were later grafted to a movie that has been shown in many different forms and lengths across its history.
In the new semi-live version, directed by Claudio Valdes Kuri, great vocal fun is sparked by Enrique Arreola. And when there are scads of characters on the screen, the two (or briefly three) narrators have to keep so many character voices going that you wonder how they manage to keep it all straight.
Ultimately one leaves marveling at the way cinema unified and confounded languages. In their wacky, arty polyglot, Certain Inhabitants end up speaking in a universal tongue and confusing everything.
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“El Automovil Gris”
Where: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
Phone: 312-443-3800
